Regardless of whether you’re a Jedi, Sith, or something in between, the relationship between a master and apprentice is a tale as old as time in Star Wars. However, there is one character who stands out as being on par with Sheev Palpatine (aka Darth Sidious) in terms of a messy history with apprentices: Darth Maul.
After being sliced and diced by Obi-Wan Kenobi in The Phantom Menace, kicked to the curb by his old master Sidious, and cured of his madness by Nightsister magic 10 years later, Maul set his sights on creating his own empire. However, Maul understood that his goals — including destroying his old master — couldn’t be achieved alone. Maul might be an ex-Sith, but the Rule of Two still runs deep in his mindset.
Maul’s desire for an apprentice, however, has rarely been successful. With Star Wars: Maul — Shadow Lord teasing that the Zabrak has his sights set on a Twi’lek apprentice named Devon Izara, now is a great time to highlight how many apprentices Maul has had in his lifetime — and what ultimately happened to each of them.
Savage Opress – Around 20 BBY to 19 BBY
Maul’s first stab at finding an apprentice of his own came from an unlikely source — his fellow Dathomiran brother, Savage Opress. A yellow-skinned Zabrak with black markings, Savage first appeared in The Clone Wars episode “Monsters.” Savage was initially recruited by Asajj Ventress to help get revenge on Count Dooku, but once Savage found a deranged and spider-legged Maul on the junk and acidic planet of Lotho Minor, his loyalty shifted.
Once Maul’s sanity was restored, Maul and Savage teamed up to spread chaos and destruction across the galaxy. In Maul’s mind, they were the true Sith lords, while Sidious and Dooku were just pretenders. Having been tortured by Sidious throughout his apprenticeship, Maul treated Savage cruelly, as that was all he had ever known. When Savage tried to fight back in a lightsaber duel, Maul quickly put him in his place.
Unfortunately, Savage’s apprenticeship under Maul was doomed from the start. As the two brothers grew more powerful, Sidious took notice and went to confront them on Mandalore. It was here that Sidious killed Savage and captured Maul.
Qi’ra – 10 BBY – 2 BBY
After his brother’s death, Maul focused more on finding business partners and criminal contacts for his crime syndicate, The Shadow Collective, than on recruiting a new apprentice. This included Crimson Dawn leader Dryden Vos, who joined Maul’s syndicate during season 7 of The Clone Wars. Maul soon took over as the true head of Crimson Dawn, but left Dryden to serve as the public face.
However, Dryden was soon killed and replaced by his lieutenant, Qi’ra. Unlike with Dryden, whom Maul kept some level of distance from, Maul freely told Qi’ra about the secrets of the Sith Order. He revealed to her his treasury of Sith artifacts and the truth that Sheev Palpatine was a Sith lord known as Darth Sidious.
While Maul would later try to recruit another apprentice in the future, we know from Marvel’s Crimson Reign and Hidden Empire comics that Maul must have felt some sort of kinship to Qi’ra. Not only did he reveal to her his plans to use a Sith artifact to awaken an ancient power to kill Sidious and Vader, but he also taught her Teräs Käsi, a special hand-to-hand combat style that was particularly useful against Force users. It’s currently unknown whether Maul ended their master and apprentice relationship before his death in Rebels in 2 BBY.
Ezra Bridger – 3 BBY – 2 BBY
No matter which show or film he appears in, Maul is always searching for a new apprentice. In the Rebels episode “Twilight of the Apprentice,” he targets Ezra Bridger after they meet at the Sith temple on Malachor, which Ezra is exploring with his Jedi master Kanan Jarrus and Ahsoka Tano. Though neither of them trusts the other — they both give false names — Maul sees the potential to shape Ezra into a powerful ally and apprentice.
Together, the two work to unlock the Sith holocron in the temple, but while Ezra is at first lured in by sympathy for Maul after learning about how his family was destroyed by the Empire, this trust is broken when Maul turns on Kanan and Ahsoka, blinding Kanan in the process.
Even though the two left Malachor on troubled terms, Maul and Ezra’s short time together allowed them to form a tentative force bond — though far from being on par with the relationship between Ezra and his real master, Kanan. It was this bond that allowed Ezra to feel Maul’s death at the hands of Obi-Wan Kenobi on Tatooine.
With Shadow Lord just around the corner, there’s plenty of speculation that Maul is looking for a new apprentice in Devon Izara. Whether Maul will be more successful in convincing her to join him remains to be seen when the first two episodes debut on Disney Plus on April 6
