Apparently, no one ever really dies in science-fiction stories.
A trailer has been released for the upcoming fourth season of Star Wars: The Clone Wars, a show which has proved very popular among all ages of Star Wars fans, unlike many other projects which George Lucas, the creator or Star Wars, has taken a personal hand in lately.
In this trailer, we see some clips of Obi-Wan’s fight with Darth Maul from Star Wars: Episode one, then a few smokey flashes of the character’s angry CGI face, and the words “Darth Maul returns.”
Interestingly, this comes just as George Lucas reveals that Clone Wars is top-level canon.
For the uninitiated, the Star Wars stories are broken into multiple canon levels, with the films being the highest level canon, side projects by Lucas, like Christmas specials and cartoons being a second tier of canon, and the books and guides occupying the bottom rung. Each level of canon supersedes any conflicting information in the rungs below.
“This is Star Wars, and I don’t make a distinction between [Clone Wars] and the films,” Lucas said in an interview released by SciFiNow – a science-fiction enthusiast magazine based in the UK, seemingly implying that the events of Clone Wars are top canon, which makes some sense considering how closely Lucas himself has been working on the series. That interview was about Season 3, however – which is just now coming to the UK – so there were not many other new insights for North American audiences.
Cartoon Network did send out a press release to accompany the trailer however, and in it, we get a bit more info. “The decision to continue Darth Maul’s story was something that came directly from George,” says Dave Filoni, Supervising Director of Star Wars: The Clone Wars. “We all agreed that his return needed to be unique, unexpected and revenge filled. We don’t know what his outcome will be, and as a fan – that’s exciting.”
The fourth season of Star Wars: The Clone Wars has already begun on Cartoon Network, and can be found there on Friday evenings. The date in the trailer hints that Maul will not appear until the end of the season, in the spring.
