By: Dominic Jones
Entertainment Weekly just released a new preview clip for next week's Season Two finale of
Star Wars Rebels, "Twilight of the Apprentice". The clip features Ezra talking to the former Sith Lord Darth Maul, as Maul reminisces about his time with the Sith. Check it out below,
On the decision to bring Maul into Rebels, Filoni said,
The genesis of this idea is actually kind of an interesting one. I had pointed out several times in story meetings that we have an opportunity – if we wanted to – to actually have Darth Vader fight Darth Maul. That was something that [co-producer] Simon Kinberg and I were like, ‘Oooh…’ Then there was the opponent in the story meetings who would say, ‘Well, that’s fan service,’ and I’m like, ‘Yeah – exactly.’ [Laughs] I don’t see the problem with that, but you know we were very careful that we don’t just do things because they’re cool. We want to do things that are story driven.
When asked if Darth Vader and Darth Maul would fight in the finale, Filoni said,
I have to say that by the end of it, the story was completely different than where we had started. I don’t want to necessarily promise something that doesn’t happen – the Vader/Maul thing is interesting at a fandom level. [But] the more compelling personal story becomes about Ahsoka and Vader.
On how he portrayed Maul in Rebels, Witwer said,
Life kind of passed him by. At one point he had this incredible potential and it looked like success was a given. And then the whole thing happened in Phantom Menace where he became, um, a lot shorter. [Laughs.] And then he lived a very miserable existence until it looked he began to put this life back together. Right as he was about to achieve a measure of success, his old master Palpatine took that from him. And then later if you read some of the comics, no sooner does he discover who his mother is but she’s killed.
Filoni gave some insight into what Maul has been doing since we last saw him,
I think wandering is exactly correct. To tell the story we had to create several backstories for it. One of the big backstories was what has Maul been doing and how did he get to this planet, Malachor? The other story was what the heck happened on Malachor? So I actually wrote a history of it and what goes on there a thousand years ago - which explains the stone figures, and the temple, and all the mechanism you see there.
On Ezra being tempted by the Dark Side, Filoni said,
This whole season has been about getting Ezra to kind of explore the dark side of the Force and be aware of its existence on a powerful level that maybe he didn’t understand before. It’s really kind of an Empire Strikes Back movement for the series, where we bring the dark side out more to our heroes and challenge them with it. It’s going to get pretty crazy before the end here.
The finale looks to be incredible. The last preview for it focused heavily on the Ahsoka/Vader aspect of it, which promises to be huge for fans of The Clone Wars. Adding Maul into play adds another interesting angle for the show. It will be interesting to see how far down the dark path Ezra will actually go, under the influence of Maul.
"The Twilight of the Apprentice", the one hour finale of Season Two of Star Wars Rebels, airs Wednesday March 30th at 9pm on Disney XD.
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