Not too long ago, a news report traversed the internet claiming that Darth Maul had been cut from the Obi-Wan Kenobi series. The story was so big that we even ran a feature explaining why Star Wars needs to bring back Maul. However, Deborah Chow, who directed all six episodes of Obi-Wan Kenobi, is here to set things straight.
"As long as I’ve been involved, we’ve never had Darth Maul in any of it," she tells Total Film in the new issue of the magazine, which features Obi-Wan Kenobi on the cover. "Dave [Filoni] did a beautiful job of telling that story already."
Maul's story was brought to a conclusion in Filoni's animated Star Wars series, with the horned devil from The Phantom Menace being defeated by Obi-Wan (again) during the events of Rebels. In fact, Chow says that, while she took ideas from the initial development of the project, which started as a movie, Maul was never in the conversation.
"For anybody trying to tell a story in the middle of these two trilogies, there were only certain elements that made sense in where [Obi-Wan] is," she says, adding that while Maul failed to make the cut, Darth Vader did not.
"With a lot of the legacy aspects, the decision to bring Vader into it was not made lightly. We’re 10 years after Revenge Of The Sith. Where is Obi-Wan’s starting place? What has been important to him in his life? Anakin and Vader are a huge and very profound part of his life. We ended up feeling that he made sense in telling this story. And Vader casts such a dark shadow in this, that to have Maul as well, it might be a little bit much."
In the cover story of the new issue of Total Film magazine, Ewan McGregor, Darth Vader actor Hayden Christensen, co-star Moses Ingram, and Chow talk in-depth about Obi-Wan and his new adventure.
The first two episodes of Obi-Wan Kenobi will premiere on Disney Plus on Friday, May 27, with subsequent episodes premiering on Wednesdays. For much more from McGregor and co, check out the new issue of Total Film when it hits shelves on Thursday, April 28.
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