Kworld Trend | Original Darth Maul Design Unearthed and it’s Quite Something ,
The Star Wars series is very well known for the effort it puts into designing the physical appearance of its characters.
From Darth Vader’s iconic appearance to the crude forms taken by aliens like Jabba the Hutt and Watto, it goes a long way to making the galaxy far, far away, varied and exciting.
Among these characters, one of the most immediately recognizable is Darth Maul, who first appears as the main on-screen antagonist in the opening of the prequel trilogy, The Phantom Menace.
With his red and black face and double-sided lightsaber, his design was one of the absolute highlights of a controversial first film, but if recently surfaced art is to be believed, it could easily have been very different.
Lucasfilm
From pale blue to red and black
On Reddit, a user shared a series of drawings depicting Star Wars villains from their initial designs to the final product. For many, like Darth Vader and Emperor Palpatine, the evolution has been quite subtle, but for others, it’s quite the opposite, notably Darth Maul.
Maul himself apparently began life as a mortal pale blue being with long red locks. From there, the character kept the same face, even though he was given a hood, before completely changing tactics and making him purple, with gold details on the face and a haircut straight out of the accountant’s manual.
He then became a golden being with an infamous mustache before finally getting closer to the final design we know and love. As a comment under the article notes notes, there’s even a fun story about how the designs came to be.
“If I remember correctly, the first Maul was from Lucas telling Ian McCaig “I want to see your worst nightmare.” Upon seeing the drawing, Lucas paused and then said “Maybe, let’s see your second worst nightmare.”
The other character who truly went through trials on the way to his final form was Count Dooku, who began life as a golden-skinned woman with twisted, almost sentient hair. From there, the character became a more generic hooded figure, before eventually arriving at the version made so famous by Christopher Lee.
General Grievous is the final surprise, initially seen by the artists as a blank-eyed boy in a chair. How they arrived at the wheezy final product is beyond me, but I’m glad they did, even if I’m curious as to what this boy had up his evil sleeve.
