Ray Park Will Return As Darth Maul For The Clone Wars Season 7

This weekend’s Star Wars Celebration gave us a sneak peak at what Lucasfilm has got planned for the miraculous seventh season of The Clone Wars animated series that’s coming to Disney Plus in the near future. Once the show was cancelled back in 2014, we thought this chapter of the saga had been closed for good, but now we get to see the story end on its own terms. And, by all accounts, it’s going to go out with a bang.

One thing the trailer told us was that Darth Maul would be returning once again in the season. Seeing as he was chopped in half in his first appearance in The Phantom Menace, it’s surprising how often this Dathomir-dweling delinquent has come back. The last time we saw him was in a shock cameo in last year’s Solo: A Star Wars Story, which allowed Ray Park to reprise his role for the first time in nearly 20 years.

Well, the good news is that he’s reprising it again for The Clone Wars. As always, Sam Witwer will provide the character’s voice, but the production team have enlisted Park to do the motion capture for the villain’s fight scenes. Showrunner Dave Filoni revealed the news at SWCC, along with the fact that Park’s moves will be seen as Maul has another fierce face-off with Obi-Wan Kenobi.

“I wanted this fight to be big. I wanted this to be an epic lightsaber fight… This one had to be among the best, if not the best we did,” Filoni teased. “I went and I know Ray Park and I said, ‘Ray, wouldn’t it be great… why don’t we suit you up in mo-cap suit and be Darth Maul?’ So when you see Maul fighting, it’s going to be really Maul fighting… There’s just something unique about how Ray moves… It was a great moment having him perform it.”

This should be an exciting stand-off between the two old enemies, particularly since the fact that Star Wars Rebels is set after The Clone Wars means we know their fate. The fourth and final season of the TCW follow-up saw the final end of Maul, beaten by Kenobi in combat on Tatooine. Plus, after the planned Solo sequel never materialized, it’s great to be getting more Maul than we expected.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars season 7 has yet to be given a release date, but Disney Plus goes online on November 12th.