‘Solo: A Star Wars Story’ Ending Explained: Wait, Didn’t Darth Maul Die?

There’s a lot going on in Star Wars. Even as a devoted fan of the franchise, I am sometimes blindsided by some of the twists because the story started to swerve in a random tie-in comic or a cartoon from years ago. Take Solo: A Star Wars Story for example. There’s one such twist in the film that pays off a whole lotta developments from the past decade that have taken place in comics, cartoons, young adult novels–pretty much everything except a major motion picture. That twist–are spoiler warnings still relevant if you’ve already read the headline and read this far?–is that Darth Maul is alive.

At the end of Solo, Qi’ra (Emilia Clarke) contacts her ex-boss Dryden Vos’ employer, the head of the dangerous Crimson Dawn crime syndicate. The figure on the holo call pulls of his cloak and reveals himself to be a familiar face to everyone that lived through the Phantom Menace merchandising blitz of 1999: Darth Maul.

If you’ve only ever watched the Star Wars movies, then this had to have been a major shock. After all, the last time we saw this tattooed Sith lord, his halves were tumbling down a shaft in Naboo after a duel with Obi-Wan Kenobi. Ray Park’s spin-kicking, double-bladed bad guy may have been the breakout character of Star Wars: Episode I–The Phantom Menace, but he didn’t even survive the movie!

Except… he did!

If you follow the Star Wars expanded universe, which encompasses all those entries that clutter up your Amazon results when you just want to buy a Han Solo figure, then you weren’t surprised by Darth Maul’s return. That’s because the guy’s been back in action for a while now, appearing in a whole bunch of comics and TV episodes!

The seeds for Darth Maul’s return were planted way back in a short comic story published in the 2005 graphic novel Star Wars: Visionaries. The story “Old Wounds” from concept artist Aaron McBride featured the return of Darth Maul, now a cyborg with spider-like legs replacing what his lost in that fateful duel. The story wasn’t explicitly canon at the time and has since been deemed non-canonical, although it paved the way for Maul’s legit return in the animated series Star Wars: The Clone Wars.

In 2012, Darth Maul skittered back on screen as a mad recluse in the Clone Wars Season 4 episode “Brothers.” It was revealed that Maul used the Force to cling to an air vent in that shaft on Naboo, and he ended up on the trash planet Lotho Minor. That’s where he acquired new cybernetic spider legs, although the trauma and harsh living conditions caused him to lose his mind. This episode kicked off a storyarc wherein Maul and his brother Savage Opress teamed up to challenge the rule of law in the entire galaxy.

They overthrew the government on the warrior planet Mandalore and even challenged Maul’s former master Darth Sidious. Maul was back in a major way throughout Season 5 of Clone Wars. You can currently stream all of Star Wars: The Clone Wars on Netflix.

And that leads us up to his appearance in Solo, which takes place in continuity roughly a decade after he was last seen in Clone Wars. By this point, Maul has shaken most of the madness he suffered from during The Clone Wars and he even traded his spider legs for more humanoid ones.

This being Star Wars, this isn’t even the end of Darth Maul’s story even though it is his most recent appearance! Maul had a storyarc on the most recent Star Wars animated series, Star Wars Rebels, that kicked off in the Season 2 finale (“Twilight of the Apprentice” and concluded towards the end of Season 3 (“Twin Suns”). You can’t stream Rebels on Netflix, but you can purchase episodes digitally or watch them with the Disney XD app. So if you want even more Maul, there’s plenty to watch!

Where to stream Solo: A Star Wars Story

Stream Star Wars: The Clone Wars Season 4 Episode 21 "Brothers" on Netflix