How Star Wars: Maul – Shadow Lord Is Connected To Force Unleashed Addressed By Star Sam Witwer
Sam Witwer highlights a rewarding connection between Star Wars: Maul – Shadow Lord and The Force Unleashed. Before voicing Darth Maul in The Clone Wars, Witwer’s voice and likeness were used for the character Galen Marek/Starkiller in the popular The Force Unleashed and The Force Unleashed II video games. Witwer is now reprising the role of Maul in the upcoming animated series Maul – Shadow Lord, which was announced at Star Wars Celebration. Releasing in 2026, it will follow the titular character after the events of Revenge of the Sith as he amasses power in the criminal underworld.
While speaking with ScreenRant‘s Ash Crossan at Star Wars Celebration, Witwer shared how many of the same individuals who worked on The Force Unleashed are also working on Maul – Shadow Lord. In addition to Dave Filoni, this includes Matt Michnovetz, Brad Rau, David Collins, Steward Lee, Joel Aron, Keith Kellogg, and Athen Portillo. Witwer also discussed the unique evolution of Maul, who was originally voiced by Peter Serafinowicz and portrayed by Ray Park in The Phantom Menace. Check out Witwer’s comments below:
And it’s been really cool because the Star Wars folks, I mean, these are the same people I’ve been working with for 16 years. I started 17 or 18 years ago on The Force Unleashed, but then got moved over to Clone Wars a year after that. So I’ve been around these folks forever. These are old friends, Matt Michnovetz, who wrote on the Clone Wars. He’s our head writer. He is coming up with all this crazy stuff. And so you feel like you’re in really good hands there. And then you see the scripts, and you go, okay, great. Thank you. Thank you. We really appreciate this. Matt, thank you for being here. You have Brad Rau in charge of the whole thing as our filmmaker, our on the ground, Dave Filoni apprentice. And Brad is brilliant. Brad is one of the best filmmakers I’ve ever been near. So seeing how he sees things and how he shoots Star Wars and only constructs scenes and how he frames and creates action sequences, it’s really extraordinary. But moreover, his view and Dave’s view on how this show was going to look and field David Collins, who was the lead sound on Force Unleashed, and then he eventually played proxy. He’s the lead sound on Shadow Lord, and any for your character. You never know. Anyway, I didn’t say anything. There’s a weird symmetry between Force Unleashed and this project in that way.
Just going to say that David is very involved in unexpected ways. And then you have our host of directors, Steward Lee, for example, is doing an amazing job. Joel Aron’s infusing every frame with this painterly, like just malice and just thick shadows and reds and purples and all kinds of incredible lighting. He got Keith Kellogg pushing the animation further than he’s ever pushed it. And then you have our general, Athena Portillo, who I’ve known forever.
Yeah, it’s so cool to have a producer who’s not going to allow you to fail where she is inspiring every department to go further than they’ve ever gone. And then, of course, when we need overseeing us all and sometimes very much on the ground, getting his hands in the editorial and doing crazy stuff, Athena will call in the Emperor, Dave Filoni, who conceived this whole show. And so I feel very supported, and they’ve always been collaborative. So even when we were creating our version of Maul for the Clone Wars and studying Ray Park’s amazing performance, and Peter Serafinowicz this amazing voice, and me and Dave having all these talks about who might this character be, what can we bring to it? How can we create this character for the Clone Wars? And so he’s always been collaborative, but in this case it was a little different where it was like, okay, well listen, now you’ve been playing the character for 15 years. You need to be in deeper on all of these processes, this entire process. So I have never been so deep inside a Lucasfilm production. So it’s constant emails and phone calls and meetings and records, and it’s very exciting.
What This Means For Maul – Shadow Lord
The Animated Show Has An Excellent Team Behind It
Despite being a new Star Wars show, Maul – Shadow Lord is being helmed by a familiar creative team with extensive experience. Witwer mentions that Michnovetz worked on The Force Unleashed and The Clone Wars, but he has also written numerous episodes of Star Wars Rebels, The Bad Batch, and Tales of the Empire. Filoni, Rau, Collins, Lee, Aron, Kellogg, and Portillo have all worked on numerous Star Wars animated shows as well.
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This is a creative team that has a proven track record of working together, which bodes well for a smooth production process, and a show that will live up to the high quality of previous Star Wars animation stories. The Force Unleashed was Witwer’s Star Wars debut, but it was only the beginning of a long career working at Lucasfilm. Beyond their experience, Witwer and his collaborators showed in The Clone Wars and Star Wars Rebels that they have a deep understanding of Maul, and their insight will translate well to doing the character justice in the upcoming animated series.
Maul – Shadow Lord Is A Perfect Next Step For The Character
After Andor season 2 and the novel Trials of the Jedi by Charles Soule, Maul – Shadow Lord is now my most anticipated upcoming Star Wars story. Even though little is known about the series at this time, Witwer and the creative team working on the show have already made Maul one of the franchise’s most compelling characters through his tragic story in The Clone Wars and Star Wars Rebels. I have complete confidence that they will once again deliver as they add new depth and tragedy to Maul’s story in the post-Revenge of the Sith time period.
