Darth Maul’s surprise return at the end of Solo: A Star Wars Story is one of the movie’s most talked-about moments. But according to Sam Witwer, one major detail in that scene almost went in a very different direction: Maul’s lightsaber.
Witwer spoke about it in interviews around April 2020 while promoting the final season of The Clone Wars. In an interview conducted on April 16, 2020, and later published by The HoloFiles, he explained that once he got involved with Solo, there were things that had to be corrected because “a lot of details … weren’t consistent.” He said those changes led to a reshoot and made clear that continuity around Maul was one of the reasons.
The lightsaber was one of the biggest examples. In a September 2018 interview with Gizmodo, Witwer said there were discussions with the producers about what weapon Maul would actually be carrying in the scene. As he put it, “There was some discussion with the producers on what weapon Ray would wield, because if it’s one weapon, it means one thing. If it’s another weapon, it means something else. It could be the Darksaber, it could be the Inquisitor lightsaber — these things paint a completely different picture in the background.”
That detail matters because by the time Solo takes place, Maul should no longer be carrying the old double-bladed hilt most fans associate with The Phantom Menace. By the end of The Clone Wars’ Siege of Mandalore, Ahsoka Tano had taken Maul’s saber, so simply putting the old weapon back into his hand in Solo would have clashed with already established continuity. Later summaries of Witwer’s comments say he pushed for a weapon that actually fit where Maul was in the timeline, which is why the finished film ended up giving him the Rebels-era lightsaber design instead of just recycling the old hilt.
Witwer also made it clear that this was not about attacking the filmmakers. In the HoloFiles interview, he said the Solo team was “making a movie and doing it at lightspeed,” so the continuity issues were understandable. But once he and Dave Filoni flagged them, adjustments were made. That is why Maul’s final appearance in Solo feels like it belongs to the larger story Lucasfilm Animation had already built around him, rather than creating a contradiction with The Clone Wars and Rebels.