Massive Spoilers for Solo: A Star Wars Story are found below. If you haven’t seen it yet, then read on with that in mind. Also, what are you waiting for? Drop what you’re doing right now and go see the movie!
A big, unexpected reveal comes late in [Solo: A Star Wars Story] after Dryden Vos has been killed and Crimson Dawn’s top lieutenant Qi’ra (Emilia Clarke) uses his ring to call the leader of this criminal organization… who is revealed to be Maul. The last time we saw him in live-action, he was tumbling down a pit after being sliced in two by Obi-wan’s lightsaber. No longer a Sith (hence no “Darth” title), Maul seems to be secretly leading this criminal organization.
Ron Howard shared with /Film how this came about:
“I will say that was scripted and there was a lot of uncertainty as to who that character would be. So it was sort of initially written in a rather generic way.
It just sort of said ‘Boss.’ And I thought when I came in, I assumed they knew who it was and they were just keeping it under wraps. And they didn’t. But Maul was listed as one of the candidates. And I lobbied hard for that. I thought that made a lot of sense to me. I found that character to be really effective. And I knew for a fact, without asking directly and giving anything away, my son Reed who just turned 31, who’s a dedicated Star Wars fan, he’s a golfer. He’s not in the business. Dedicated Star Wars fan. I just whispered that possibility and he just thought that would be incredibly cool. And so for that generation, I thought, well that was gonna be a pretty interesting idea. And doing a little more research and understanding sort of how the character had worked elsewhere, I thought it was good. And the Kasdan’s were on board with that. And but then we actually shot it twice. Because we did it once. And then we realized we, it wasn’t quite Maul enough yet.
Added the lightsaber. And intensified it. And definitely took a big jump.”
Read more at /Film.