Interview with ‘Star Wars: Maul — Shadow Lord’ Writer Matt Michnovetz

Star Wars: Maul — Shadow Lord is the most recent animated offering from Lucasfilm in a galaxy far, far away. Telling the story of Maul, the villain from 1999’s The Phantom Menace, bridging his time between the events of The Clone Wars television series and his brief cameo appearance in 2016’s Solo: A Star Wars Story. For more than 20 years, Lucasfilm Animation has been producing Star Wars shows. Since the early seasons of their first offering, The Clone Wars, Matt Michnovetz has been part of the writing stable there, working under Star Wars creator George Lucas and now-Lucasfilm top-boss Dave Filoni. Across a myriad of animated productions, Michnovetz is the head writer for Maul — Shadow Lord, whose first season came out across April and May of this year. Prior to that, Michnovetz was a staff writer on 24.

According to the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, Shadow Lord has been the single highest rated debut for a Star Wars show since the franchise has been on television with a near perfect score. Though every television show is a team effort, and the entire team definitely deserves credit, Michnovetz deserves quite a bit of that credit himself, both as head writer, and for scripting a number of episodes personally.

Script magazine had the opportunity to dive deep into the writing of the show, the lore of Star Wars, and how the work of bringing a dark character like Maul to life in a franchise as intrinsically hopeful as Star Wars was done.

Bryan Young: I really want to talk about the process of writing Maul, what it’s like breaking down this season of the show, and what your role is there to start with.

Matt Michnovetz: Dave [Filoni, Executive Producer, Creator] called me up and we got together in a room and then we brought in Brad [Rau, Executive Producer, Supervising Director] and then we brought in Athena [Portillo, Producer] and Josh Rimes [Executive Producer] and the creative executives. And Dave kind of laid out what the show was, what he wanted to do.

I worked with him to develop the pilot. And then I started writing the pilot, and we started figuring out who we wanted as writers. I wanted to put together my crack team, basically, my all-stars.

The pilot went through a number of iterations. We had a bunch of things we were doing in it that we had worked on that wasn’t working. We changed and we pushed and stuff like that.

So then when we had a good idea, we set out to hire the writers. So, we got this group of creatives and writers and our producers in a room and we went back to the old days of The Clone Wars where we would break the season at Skywalker Ranch.

Athena, Alex Spotswood [co-Executive Producer], and Filoni were able to get us a room up there and we sequestered ourselves for like a week in one of the old rooms that I used to write The Clone Wars with George [Lucas] in.

It was terrifying and challenging, but also super exciting.

George created the ranch basically for creatives and to like permeate... all this inspiration of ideas.

We just wrote and had dinners together and we were constantly talking and throwing these ideas around and so on. That’s the actual writers conference. Before the writers conference, I had drawn up, basically what we call a pre-conference with like Mandy [Amanda Rose Muñoz, Associate Story Editor] and Brad and Athena and Josh, and then we’d pitch it to Filoni, and he would give us notes, and then we’d fine tune it. So I went into the conference, not with a blank slate, but with an agenda.

We basically broke two stories a day, roughly, because I had written the pilot, and I had an idea where it ended, so, almost two stories a day. And we just broke out the beats, and we fleshed it out and then we would pitch it to Filoni and get notes and feedback and then revise and just keep going and kind of go through 102 to 109, roughly.

Then we’d leave.

We’d get the notes back and I would assign scripts and then the writers would go off to outline on the first five, if I recall. Then they’d start writing those, and then we’d get outlines on the back four, or whatever it was.

They’d start writing those. In the process, we’d rewrite, revise, and have meetings.

We had a follow-up conference later that year to go back over the back five and, at that point, flesh out 110 [the finale episode, The Dark Lord]. And to make sure that everything was working and that we felt strongly about it. It’s a constant process and we do Zooms and things in the meantime and get notes and revisions and stuff like that.

BY: With Maul specifically, how much conversation was there around working on balancing the tone? Listening to George Lucas over the years talk about Star Wars, at its most essential, is about brightness and hope and teaching folks how to act and be and essentially, and here you are centering Maul. And Devon, an impressionable Padawan, having trouble making decisions about where to go—which is not necessarily uncharted territory for George, looking at Anakin’s journey—but how what were the discussions like among the writers, and with yourself in the episodes you were writing, about how to balance that tone?

MM: First and foremost, with writing Maul, and in particular to the kind of themes you’re discussing, we rely on Sam [Witwer, Consulting Producer and voice of Maul], like 100%, too, because he’s the expert. He’s the voice. So, he was a huge creative part of it, and a huge help in the creative process.

Dave and I had talks early on, and then we talked with the exec-producer and the writers about exactly what you’re saying. This is the first time we’ve done a show centered around a villain, a bad guy. I mean, Maul’s not a good guy. He’s not an anti-hero. He’s not a hero. He’s just, he’s evil. He's bad. He's a murderer. But it’s about a bad guy fighting worse guys, and that was interesting to us, and the fact that we were able to create Devon and these new characters and see how they were affected by him and the choices they would make.

All the characters, including Maul, are affected by this force of nature, Vader, when he comes in at the end. The rest of the season is about them being affected by Maul and what his choices are and how it brings down them.

We weren’t gonna make him sympathetic, if anything, you understand his character better, I think. And the choices he makes that affect others, but we weren’t going to make him a hero by any means.

We also wanted to keep him as mysterious as possible, but also keep him true to form.

He’s the devil.

Every deal they make is a Faustian deal with this guy, no matter where it leads. It was challenging. It still is.

It’s going to be immensely challenging for season two.  And season one was very, very difficult in making sure that we were not giving people the wrong impression, making sure that they understand that the things he does are wrong.

That became a driver for the series, which was defining the difference between good and evil, but shading it in ways that made great stories and great moments for our characters, whether they make the right choices or bad choices. In the darkest of times, people who make the right choice, the good choice, they’re a better person.

Like what Master Daki tries to inspire. Like some of what Lawson tries to inspire being a lawman. They rise to become heroes, you know?

It’s a theme that’s going to be important in the next season as well.

BY: It felt like there was an element of The Godfather. Yeah, Michael Corleone is the bad guy, but we like him because he’s slightly less bad than all the other bad guys we see. But Devon in the middle of that, on that Anakin Skywalker scale, as she’s interacting in that first episode with Master Daki, you see her struggling with the same things Anakin was in Revenge of the Sith, where the Jedi aren’t really giving great answers in a world, they’re not equipped to deal with.

Evil has forced their hand, so they’re doing the best they can, whether or not they succeed is a different story.

As you were working with Star Wars, what is it about Star Wars in your writing that you find different than working on other properties or even your own original work?

MM: There’s a lot. You know, it’s weird because while there’s a lot more to be aware of, and there’s a particular tone and cadence to Star Wars, aside from all the Star Wars of it, right?

A lot to get approved, obviously, a lot to consider.

Have we done that before?

But, you know, it’s an IP. We’ve done that before. Have we not done that before?

But at its core, the stories, the morality, creating the depth to the characters and finding new ways that are exciting to do it that we haven’t seen before is something that I try to keep in mind and struggle with, with everything I work on.

In every form, you know what I mean? That’s the key to writing, I guess.

Star Wars is complicated and it’s hard. The hardest thing is just making great original characters whose choices seem natural and organic and don’t feel like they’re driven by the plot as opposed to the character themselves. And that’s something that is universal with everything I write.

You know, am I doing this because I want to see a big action sequence? Or am I doing it because I’m forcing the drama? If you do it right, I think the drama’s natural and it’s organic but that’s harder said than done.

BY: What for you is the key to unlocking a scene to make that feel organic for you, when you’re sitting there at the keyboard?

MM: Yeah, it’s funny. Because when we break the story and we have the beats, we try to get as much detail in there for the writers and for myself as well when I’m doing it for myself. You know where it’s going, and you know what the next beat you’ve got to get to is, whether it’s exactly the following scene or whether it’s a couple scenes later, wherever the character’s going, you know what it is. And then you get into the scene and you’re like, well, I don’t know if that’s going to make any sense.

That’s why we write on note cards a lot, so we can move them around.

One interesting sidebar is that we have the whiteboard that we write on and we have these magnetized dry erase board pieces. So, we don’t just write on the board, so we’re constantly erasing. We have a stack of these magnetized things, and we can write on them and put them all on the table, then we can slap them up, pull them down, slap them up, move around. That’s helpful because, to your point, you see that as you’re into the scene, you’re like, 'well, wait, no, that’s not going to make a sense. They wouldn’t do that or that’s, or wait, here’s an opportunity.'

Because I’m in the mindset of this character and knowing what I know. And as that character, and having those emotions, I wouldn’t do that. So, we gotta say no, it’s gonna go in another direction. We’re gonna choose the left-hand path on that one. You know what I mean?

And to go back to your other question too, which is great, is that one thing with Star Wars we try to do that I don’t necessarily have to do, but the mandate to do, and also is part of the DNA, is that Star Wars also has to be fun.

So, I try to make everything I write fun. Sometimes some of the stuff can be incredibly dark, incredibly heavy, or just terrifying, playing on the genre.

But with Star Wars, we have tremendous opportunity to get into moments of comedy, and then immediately have a moment of transition that goes into either a thrill or action or tension, and then throw a little bit more comedy. Just have the fun and roll with it.

Those are some of things that we learned from George that he does so well. It’s so brilliant. You look at A New Hope and you’ve got the Jawas, which are terrifying at first, and then they come scurrying out of the canyon, and they’re adorable, and you’re like, what are these things?

Amazing.

And then you’ve got the Tusken Raiders. They’re terrifying as a little kid, they stand up and they’re making their noises and they got their [gaffi] sticks and they’re attacking...

Or Phantom Menace. Here’s a movie that has both Jar Jar and Darth Maul, right? Two iconic, amazing characters. And they represent totally different sides of spectrum.

I went to go see Phantom for the 25th anniversary recently and it killed. The whole movie killed. There were people who were cheering. People of all generations. A lot of younger viewers had seen it when they were kids, and then a bunch of old people like myself, and people with their kids, and they were cheering and laughing, all of Jar Jar’s jokes killed Darth Maul, cheering, Palpatine, cheering. R2D2 comes out, and he’s fixing the ship, and they’re cheering.

See-Threepio comes out? They’re cheering.

It just all worked.

The Podrace? People on the edge of their seats.

That’s, I think, the magic and the beauty of writing Star Wars in particular. To be able to do that. If anything else tried to emulate that, with all those ingredients... the recipe, I think would come out a little different.

BY: Star Wars animation seems to do it an even faster pace than the movies, which seems absurd. Does that make the writing more difficult because you’ve got to do it at an even faster pace? And with working with George on Clone Wars, how did he push you to learn that skill? Because that’s something I imagine might be even unique to him.

MM: Yes. 100%. I mean, it is. We have to be, especially since the scripts are coming in roughly 24-25 pages and they’re shorter episodes. And then we cut it down, we watch it. It has to move, move, move, move, move.

We have to be incredibly frugal in what we’re choosing to say. In dialogue and in action, but particularly in dialogue. Whereas I think live action feature films may have a little more liberty.

Live action television is interesting because they have the ability to do longer stories of drama and characters over the course of a season or two. Movies, I think, have to be somewhat tight because obviously you’re taking all of that and pushing it into 2 hours, roughly.

And then with our series, the action moves so fast. I think that’s one of the benefits of animation. There’s a tremendous amount of opportunity and benefits with animation, but that certainly is one of them, to be able to do all these kind of like crazy, off-the-wall action sequences like we saw.

I like to write out my action sequences, I like to write “backflip” a lot. I don’t know why I’m into backflips and like watching what these guys do with the backflips and the corkscrews. I don’t get out of bed for a minimum of 5 backflips. Not physically, obviously, because my back hurts...

BY: Speaking of The Dark Lord, specifically that episode, what was the decision-making behind not having Vader say a word? Because he felt like Jason Voorhees from Friday the 13th, right? He was a horror movie villain.

This is a point at the timeline where Maul has really no idea who he is other than he’s clearly something different.

He’s not an inquisitor.

And it really pays off a moment from Twilight of the Apprentice [Star Wars Rebels, Season Two Finale] where he says, “I can’t take him alone.” This is something that I was always really affected by; that moment where Maul actually pierces through his ego for a moment.

You’ve paid that off really beautifully here and Vader doesn’t even have to say a word.

Was that budgetary because you didn’t want to get into Vader’s voice? Or was that a writing decision and a purposeful thing?

MM: It was purposeful.

When Dave came out and said, “Let’s get Vader in here. We know we need it.” We knew what the story needed, and that was the perfect character to come in and kind of exemplify a force of nature. That would take them right to the end.

Every character that faced him in that finale is left with a sacrifice to make. And they’re left with a change, and that’s what we needed.

So, he didn’t have anything to say. Dave was like, “You don’t need dialogue. There’s no need for dialogue.”

That was, again, back to the frugality of writing this thing when you want to tighten it up. There’s no need. We’ve heard all the lines. It felt right being that Jason Voorhees, Michael Myers force of nature that comes in and let them deal with it in all of their different choices and options.

And that’s what really it was from.

Maul knew that Anakin was being groomed to be Palpatine’s apprentice, but this doesn’t look like Anakin. You know what I mean? And so, what is this? Did this thing kill Anakin? Did it not? Little by little, Maul putting pieces together just made it more powerful.

It made it stronger.

BY: I loved seeing Maul in the Obi-Wan/Phantom Menace position, the way you staged the lightsabers for Devon and everything. I really, really loved the staging and how you organized everything in that last fight. It was really, really well done. And I’m wondering, just how much of that was on the page and how much of it evolved through the iteration of the episode?

MM: Some of it was on the page. I have to give absolute credit to Brad and the team, Steward Lee and Nate Villanueva and Saul Ruiz [Episode Directors], and their brilliant teams, and Joel Aron [Visual FX Supervisor] and the editors, and everybody on the crew who made those sequences turn out the way they did.

You know, we got on the page a couple things we wanted to do. I need to get a backflip in there, but they just took it to the next level. It’s a quantum leap between the script and I watched it evolve and I was just jaw on the floor every single time.

And the things they studied, I mean, you should talk to Brad about a lot of that. It was just amazing, like studying the different kinds of techniques and from like martial arts and various characters, Maul’s martial arts, Wushu, to taking the classic David Prowse Vader from parts of A New Hope and Empire, and giving him some weight and strength, I mean, our crew is just fantastic.

BY: It really just like watching the different iterations of Vader, where he starts with the one hand in Empire, and when he’s taking down Master Daki, it looks like Luke’s takedown of him, where Luke’s lost control with that rage from Return of the Jedi. There’s just so much to dissect in that episode.

MM: Those guys, they pay attention to every single frame. It goes without saying anything, even between the frames. They’re reading between the frames. I hope no one ever thinks that it’s a coincidence or an accident. Nothing is an accident. Everything is meticulous.

BY: There’s a reason George put that that line in Qui-Gon’s mouth. “Nothing happens by accident.”

MM: Nothing happens by accident.

The first season of Star Wars: Maul - Shadow Lord is now streaming in its entirety on Disney+. A second season in currently in production, but there’s no word on when it will be released.

You can learn more about Bryan Young at his website.