11 Reasons You're Wrong About Solo: A Star Wars Story

2. Darth Maul's Reveal Makes Plenty Of Sense

Star Wars Darth Maul death
Lucasfilm

While Darth Maul's inclusion in Solo did seem a tad self-indulgent, it did serve a purpose in further reiterating the thematics of Solo's story.

Speaking to Io9, screenwriters Lawrence and Jon Kasdan spoke of how Maul's inclusion further intimated the scale of Star Wars' criminal underworld, and how that, no matter how far you rise up the chain, "evil or good, you’re not in control of your destiny... Everybody serves some greater God or is mastered by something.” Maul, serving as a neat callback to one of The Phantom Menace's two redeeming features, encapsulates that in the extreme.

Maul's inclusion also sets up either one of a Solo sequel or an Obi-Wan spin-off. Given the financial reaction to Solo it's likely that the latter is the more probable choice, and though Maul's journey ended in lethal fashion in Star Wars: Rebels, there are still more stories to be told with the character - why else would they include him?

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Content Producer/Presenter

WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well. In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.