‘Star Wars: Maul – Shadow Lord’ is the next animated series from a galaxy far, far away coming to Disney Plus

Diehard fans of George Lucas’ enduring sci-fi fantasy universe are keeping tabs on the Star Wars Celebration Japan 2025 this weekend, looking for hot news on movies, TV shows, comic books, novels, and more. With The Bad Batch now behind us and Tales of the Underworld unveiled as the next six-episode anthology series, we’d wondered what the next big show from Lucasfilm Animation was going to be. Enter Maul – Shadow Lord.

Needless to say, this has been one of the most surprising announcements at the event so far. While rumors of a Maul-centric series had been swirling around over the years, nothing had come to fruition, so fans had abandoned the idea of seeing on screen what happened between The Clone Wars’ series finale, Maul’s cameo in Solo: A Star Wars Story, and his reappearance as a vagrant in Rebels. Long story short: This is the tale of the rise and fall of the Sith‘s massive criminal syndicate away from the Empire’s prying eyes, so expect more of the surprisingly dark tone past shows have often flirted with.

Veteran Star Wars voice actor Sam Witwer will reprise the role in this new ‘Star Wars: Maul – Shadow Lord’ show, and the reports from Celebration say the series sports a new, distinct animation style. It’ll be a while before a preview is released online, but we know we can expect to see the series on Disney Plus at some point in 2026.

On the live-action Star Wars TV show front of the franchise, we’re now preparing ourselves for Andor season 2‘s debut on April 22 and Ahsoka’s return next year. We’re expecting to learn more about those projects (and perhaps more) before this Celebration ends.