Solo: A Star Wars Story - What Does The Ending Really Mean?

4. Maul's Future

Another of the movie's big surprises is the big screen return of Darth Maul (now known simply as Maul), who many moviegoers would've presumed dead after The Phantom Menace.

The character has been kicking around in animated series The Clones Wars and Rebels for some time now, with the latter even bringing a fitting resolution to the character's fate. But now he's back in the movies, what comes next?

There's the potential for him to show up in a direct Solo sequel, working more openly as Qi'ra's boss and being the leader of the underworld, or this could be setup for an appearance in the long-rumoured Kenobi movie. Rebels already gave us the pair's final showdown, in a moment so great it doesn't need recreating for the big screen, but perhaps there's more of their story before then to be explored.

It could even be re-establishing the character to give him his own movie: after his 'death' he formed crime syndicate The Shadow Collective while targeting revenge on Obi-Wan and Darth Sidious, and while the Collective appears to have gone there are lots of ties to both criminal organisations and major Star Wars characters.

Whether any of this should actually happen or not is a very different question, since the work done with him in Rebels is so good, but it'd perhaps be even worse to bring him back for this cameo and then not use him again.