George Lucas Would Have Had Darth Maul As The Main Villain Of The Sequel Trilogy
By George Robbins
The Star Wars universe is easily one of the most expansive universes currently in the modern media medium with almost no equal, save for the comic book universes out there right now. Those comic book universes easily allow for stories to go from the pages of those books to the big screen in a way that has not really been seen before these past few years. So with that in mind, just how is it that any other type of universe can be made where these types of things are just as easy to make. George Lucas created a movie that was hopeful for the time period it was made in and it changed the way the science fiction genre did things from that point on. The first ‘Star Wars‘ movie changed things when it came to the idea of space epics being told in the movie medium.
It definitely wasn’t the first instance of a popular space epic, but it popularized it a bit more and made it possible for it to become more popular in the medium. Therefore, we ended ups with something no one had ever had the pleasure of seeing before and a new expansive universe was formed as a direct result. The Star Wars universe began the same way that any franchise essentially begins and that led to the following films which would be known as the original trilogy. From that moment forward, there were fans of the universe putting forth their own literature based upon that universe. Much of that literature, for a time, was considered to be a part of the ever-expanding universe that we now knew as the Star Wars universe.
What followed would eventually be a let-down to a lot of the original fans, but it became a start for a new generation of fans when the prequel trilogy released. With George Lucas’ prequel trilogy, the original trilogy was given a proper timeline and the whole universe’s mainline story was defined by episodic numbers. Many fans instantly became curious to see more content related to the universe as more and more canon fan-content released to the public. At least, people weren’t sure if it was canon or not and so they latched onto everything they possible could. What followed with Disney acquiring Lucasfilm is that every piece of content released by fans over the years that people loved was immediately made non-canon. Only certain released content actually maintained its place as canon content for the universe and people were not sure of what to make of everything that was going on.
Even though a lot of beloved fan content was made non-canon, there were still many a fan who liked the fact that Disney took over since they felt Lucas was not doing right by the brand he created. As a result, people were not too sad to see someone else handling the license, so long as it leaned back towards what people loved about the original films. That seemed to be the direction taken with the first film in the sequel trilogy put out by Disney, ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens.’ Among the sequel trilogy, it was the highest rated film they put out, but the direction the following two movies took made people feel overall disappointed by what was happening. As a result, people began wondering what things would have been like if George Lucas would have been the one to direct the new trilogy.
Lucas, not being one to just give up something without putting in his own thoughts and views, decided to let it be known how he would have done things in the new trilogy. His answer is that he decided that he wanted Darth Maul to be the overall villain of the sequel trilogy. Darth Maul was a villain that many people who have only seen the films don’t know too much about after his defeat in the prequel trilogy. After all, it turns out that in various pieces of canon content that he became something of an underworld criminal that really only looked out for himself. Bringing that very idea to the table, Lucas wanted to have Maul be an underground criminal war lord and be the one responsible for whatever may have happened in his version of the sequel trilogy. While this would have been a huge departure from the overall outline of the new trilogy, it probably would have been a welcome on if done correctly. We will never really get to see this idea come to fruition, but it is definitely a good what-if scenario to think about.