Maul

Maul was a Force-sensitive Dathomirian Zabrak male who was apprenticed to the Sith Lord Darth Sidious, and after his defeat by the Jedi Obi-Wan Kenobi, he established himself as a crime lord during the Clone Wars and the Imperial Era. The renegade Sith Lord was a formidable warrior, driven by hatred against the Jedi and his former Sith Master.

Born in 54 BBY during the time of the Galactic Republic, Maul was a son of Mother Talzin, who led the Nightsisters of Dathomir. Taken as a child by Darth Sidious, Darth Maul was molded into a deadly Dark Lord of the Sith, growing in hatred of the Jedi Knights who served the Republic and the light side of the Force—while the Jedi Order had deemed the Sith extinct for a thousand years, Maul's power-hungry master set his Grand Plan into motion with the Trade Federation's Invasion of Naboo in 32 BBY. Darth Maul announced the return of the Sith on Tatooine, where he tried to kill the Jedi emissaries of the Republic's Supreme Chancellor. However, Maul's failure to do so allowed Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn and his pupil, Padawan Obi-Wan Kenobi, to bring Queen Amidala of Naboo and a boy strong in the Force—exceptionally so, to the extent that Jinn believed this "Anakin Skywalker" to be the prophesied Chosen One who would bring balance to the galaxy—to Coruscant, the heart of the Republic.

Nevertheless, Darth Sidious used the resultant crisis in the Senate to elevate his public persona, Senator Palpatine of Naboo, to the position of Supreme Chancellor. The Queen and Jedi, meanwhile, joined forces with the native Gungans on Naboo to throw off the yoke of the Trade Federation. Darth Maul, having been dispatched by his master to oversee the Federation leadership, was redirected to handle the Jedi. Maul dealt a fatal blow to Qui-Gon Jinn, but Kenobi in turn defeated Maul by bisecting him at the waist, with the Dark Lord falling to the abyss and presumed dead. He was actually alive, sustained by his rage in the wastelands of Lotho Minor. Around the same time, Sidious took on Jinn's Jedi Master, Dooku, as his new apprentice. A decade afterward, Dooku set the second part of the Sith plan into motion with the start of the Clone Wars.

As the galaxy plunged into war, Mother Talzin plotted against Dooku and had one of her sons, Savage Opress, seek out Maul. Indeed, the defeated Zabrak was brought back to Dathomir and had his sanity and mobility restored by Talzin's magick. Maul trained his newfound brother in the ways of the Sith, initially wanting to take revenge against Obi-Wan Kenobi. After the brothers were defeated by the Jedi, they took their chance to increase their powers with a brazen takeover of Mandalore, the erstwhile neutral world torn between the interests of the Republic and the Separatists. Maul seized control of the self-styled Death Watch and used them terrorise Mandalore while he expanded his criminal enterprise, known as the Shadow Collective—the Pyke Syndicate, Black Sun, and the Hutt Clan were coerced to join forces under the underworld's new crime lord—until he caught the attention of Sidious, who killed Maul's brother and captured Maul.

Maul was rescued by his Mandalorian loyalists and immediately tried to reconsolidate his Shadow Collective. However, he and his mother's desire for revenge against Darth Sidious was checked by the Dark Lord, who instead decimated their homeworld of Dathomir with the use of the Separatists led by Dooku and General Grievous. Mother Talzin herself was killed while protecting Maul, and his syndicates were weakened. While he regathered with his loyalists on Mandalore, Maul sensed that his former master's Grand Plan was coming to its climax and wished to lure Anakin Skywalker—the Jedi Knight trained by Obi-Wan Kenobi whom he correctly believed was central to Sidious' schemes—alongside Kenobi himself to Mandalore. Maul's thirst for revenge was foiled again when Republic forces intervening on the side of the Mandalore resistance were instead led by Skywalker's old apprentice, Ahsoka Tano.

While Maul and Tano fought at the Siege of Mandalore, Sidious successfully executed his plan to destroy the Jedi Order and anoint himself Galactic Emperor. With the support of some Mandalorian and Zabrak loyalists, Maul continued trying to control the underworld but operated more clandestinely, away from the prying apparatus of the new Imperial regime. He was known in criminal circles as the Shadow Lord and was pursued by the Emperor's Inquisitors, who simply called him the Shadow. In the Empire's later years, Maul secretly coordinated the Five Crime Syndicates and controlled the Crimson Dawn syndicate through Dryden Vos and Qi'ra.

Maul also sought a great weapon on Malachor purported to be able of destroying all life and thus crossed paths with the Jedi Kanan Jarrus and Ezra Bridger as well as Ahsoka Tano. However, they were all stopped by Darth Vader, the fallen Skywalker. Maul escaped and continued to tempt Bridger towards the dark side in service of his own ends. Bridger rejected Maul's overtures, but not before the former Sith Lord used their connection to track his old nemesis Kenobi back to Tatooine. Their last duel ended with one fatal blow to Maul. Learning that Kenobi had consigned himself to a life of exile to protect the prophesied Chosen One who would destroy the Sith, Maul died with the belief that he would ultimately be avenged.

Text and facts from the “Maul” article on Wookieepedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0. Modified for this site.