Dark Horse Comics may be losing the Star Wars license to Marvel Entertainment in 2015, but that doesn't mean that its last year in a galaxy far, far away will be a quiet one. This May, the publisher will release a four-part miniseries adapting the screenplay for the unproduced series finale of Star Wars: The Clone Wars.
Last year, Lucasfilm cancelled the successful Cartoon Network series after five seasons, leaving a planned finale centering around Darth Maul -- the villain of Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace who reappeared in the animated series' fourth season -- unmade.
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"Due to the Star Wars: The Clone Wars TV show’s sudden cancelation, Lucasfilm wasn’t able to film the final episodes of the series, which is a shame because the story is an important — and action-packed — chapter in Darth Maul’s continuing evolution as envisioned by George Lucas," writer Jeremy Barlow told Newsarama.com. "Never ones to let a good story slip away, Dark Horse and the team at Lucasfilm saw an opportunity to save these teleplays from obsolescence and we’re adapting them into a four-part miniseries called Darth Maul: Son of Dathomir."
Despite adapting the final episodes of a cancelled TV show, Barlow said that the new series will be "as new-reader-friendly as possible," saying that readers won't need to have watched Clone Wars in order to understand what's going on. "All you need to know is that Darth Maul has returned, that he’s really pissed off, and that his former master Darth Sidious is determined to put him back in the ground, permanently," he explained.
Barlow called being invited to participate in the project "really flattering," adding "I’m being trusted with bringing home an important storyline that George Lucas, Dave Filoni and the team at Lucasfilm Animation had been building over several seasons, and I appreciate the confidence that Dark Horse and Lucasfilm have in my ability to pull it off."
