Here’s Why Solo: A Star Wars Story Brought Back [SPOILERS]

Solo: A Star Wars Story featured a handful of familiar characters from the franchise’s past – Lando Calrissian, Chewbacca, obviously Han Solo himself – but it also brought back one character we really weren’t expecting. Towards the end of the movie, it’s revealed exactly who Paul Bettany’s gangster Dryden Vos answers to, and it’s one of the biggest villains in the galaxy.

If you’ve seen the film, you’ll know that it’s Darth Maul, the Sith lord last witnessed being chopped in two at the end of The Phantom Menace. The exciting thing is that his appearance here follows on from his resurrection in the Star Wars Rebels animated series, which saw him get back up on his feet with the aid of some robotic legs and ingratiate himself into the criminal underworld, hence why he’s in charge of the Crimson Dawn crime syndicate in Solo.

So, where did the idea to bring back Maul come from? CinemaBlend spoke to co-writer Jon Kasdan, who penned the script with his father Lawrence Kasdan, and the writer revealed that it was all his idea and something he really pushed for throughout the scripting process. The movie needed a shadowy big bad and, as a fan of Rebels, Kasdan thought Maul would be the perfect candidate.

“I was passionate about that from very early on. You know, one of the things I thought was very important to creating the texture of this world was that the crime syndicate that they were working for had people above Dryden. That it felt big and scary and that Dryden was a capo, and we needed someone who would be revealed at the end. We could see clearly that Qi’ra was moving up in the world and that she would assume the role Dryden had and that would put her in a position that was more dangerous and tenuous than the one she was currently in.

Continuing on, he said:

So he seemed like, having been familiar with Rebels, having been familiar with the instinct to keep that character going, and then what happens to him and his journey into crime, the Nightsisters and all of that stuff were irresistible bits of lore to me. I thought, ‘If there isn’t a hard and fast law about where he is at this point in the narrative, that’s the guy I’d love to see.'”

Fans have always wished that Maul had a bigger role in the movies and Solo goes some way to giving them that. At the end of the prequel, Emilia Clarke’s Qi’ra flies off to Dathomir to meet with Maul, which Kasdan confirms means she’s going to rise up the ranks of his organization. Clearly, there’s room to follow up the story in a potential sequel, though that’s yet to be officially announced by Lucasfilm. According to director Ron Howard, it all depends on the box office return and fan reception to Solo: A Star Wars Story, so if you want to see more of Maul, be sure to support the film by catching it in theaters this weekend.