While we already know various tidbits about Lucas’s original plans for the Star Wars Sequel Trilogy, some major new info has dropped in The Star Wars Archives 1999–2005 by Paul Duncan, a 600-page behind-the-scenes tome in which Lucas himself lifts the veil on crucial plot details for his never-realized plans to complete his vision of the franchise. The biggest revelation in the book, via Polygon, is that Darth Maul was destined to not only return in Lucas’s Sequel Trilogy but serve as the overall big bad. Intriguingly, Maul’s main Light Side opponent would have been Leia herself—more on that aspect in a second. Stream your Star Wars favorites right here! “Maul eventually becomes the godfather of crime in the universe because, as the Empire falls, he takes over,” explains Lucas. Indeed, the way the creator originally intended to bring Maul back to the big screen is a profound revelation in more ways than one, firstly because it tells us that Maul’s eventual cinematic reemergence in Solo: A Star Wars Story—in which he was revealed to be the hidden mastermind behind crime syndicate Crimson Dawn and big boss to Emilia Clarke’s shady Qi’ra—was always the general plan for the character. Those Dark Horse comics would have been further mined for the movies, since Lucas’s Sequel Trilogy Maul would have been served by an apprentice in Darth Talon, a female Twi’lek (a “Lethan” with red skin that’s rare for her species) whose body is covered with Sith tattoos similar to Maul’s. However, the character (pictured below) would likely have carried a different backstory than the comics. First introduced in the non-canon Star Wars: Legacy comics, Darth Talon exists over a century after the events of the Original Trilogy, a graduate of a Sith academy led by Darth Krayt and given the sinister (ultimately unsuccessful) task of trying to turn Jedi family descendant Cade Skywalker to the dark side. In 2011, an eventually-canceled LucasArts video game, titled Battle of the Sith Lords, apparently bore Lucas-approved plans to have Darth Maul team up with Darth Talon, an idea that may have been a manifestation of these Sequel Trilogy plans. It seems that Lucas’s sequels could have culminated with Maul somehow tangling with Carrie Fisher’s Princess Leia Organa, who would have stepped into focus as the mythos’ main hero, and a central figure in the post-Return of the Jedi effort to rebuild galactic civilization. Lucas’s sequel plot details describe a story set in the aftermath of a great war (rather than the retread of one). Thus, it would have centered on the concept of reconstruction, which, as he put it, is “harder than starting a rebellion or fighting a war.” Leia’s task would have been increasingly perilous, since the Empire’s fall left a sizable power vacuum, which would be filled by the crime syndicate run by the reemerging Maul and evil apprentice Talon. According to Lucas, this storyline would have paralleled world events at the time: the Iraq War, the fall of Saddam Hussein, and the subsequent emergence of radicalized factions to fill the void. Thus, while Mark Hamill’s Luke Skywalker would have been busy rebuilding the Jedi Order, Leia would have walked a different path by rebuilding the Galactic Republic while battling Maul’s criminal organization, and would have eventually emerged as the Supreme Chancellor. As Lucas plainly put it, “she ended up being the chosen one.”
