Over the weekend, we were treated to a new trailer for
Star Wars: The Clone Wars Season 7. The action-packed trailer featured plenty of exciting moments, but it was the end that really got people talking - a glimpse of a duel between Ahsoka Tano and Darth Maul. Executive producer and director Dave Filoni briefly touched on the showdown, explaining that he wanted this fight to be epic.
“As much as the Obi-Wan versus Maul fight was brief, I wanted this fight to be big. I wanted this to be an epic lightsaber fight,” Filoni said during the panel at Star Wars Celebration.
“I haven’t done too many of those in Clone Wars over the years and this one, I felt, had to be among the best if not the best we did.”
In order to achieve this, Filoni brought in original Darth Maul actor Ray Park to help with the motion capturing for the fight. Park played the physical part of the character in 1999's
The Phantom Menace (Peter Serafinowicz provided the voice) and then reappeared as the character for a brief cameo in
Solo: A Star Wars Story. Now he will appear in
The Clone Wars.
“So the best way to have a great lightsaber fight is to talk to somebody who has done lightsaber fights,” Filoni explained.
“So I know Ray Park from over the years and I said ‘Ray, wouldn’t it be great, now that I’ve experienced doing more live-action stuff, why don’t we just suit you up in a mo-cap suit and have you be Darth Maul again?’ So when you see Maul fighting it’s going to really be Maul fighting.”
“As well as [my animation team] has done everything in the past when Maul has lightsaber fights there’s just something unique about the way Ray moves,” Filoni continued.
“It’s a skill, it’s an art, it’s truly him and I was thrilled that we could bring that and have [Sam Witwer, who voices Maul in animation], the voice and the body, together. It was a great moment.”
Star Wars: The Clone Wars will return for a 12-episode seventh season set to premiere on Disney+. While the streaming service will launch on November 12, 2019,
The Clone Wars still does not have a release date.