Star Wars' 98% Rotten Tomatoes Series Just Set the Course for the Saga's Future
With a 98% Rotten Tomatoes score, the latest Star Wars series blasts the saga out of its Disney-era turbulence and stakes out the clearest, most exciting path forward Lucasfilm has offered since George Lucas passed the torch.
Star Wars just reminded everyone what its future should look like, and no, it is not another round of Jedi vs. Sith at center stage.
Where Star Wars is right now
Since Disney took over, Lucasfilm under Kathleen Kennedy has swung big and often. The sequel trilogy got Star Wars back in theaters with a fresh lineup of heroes and villains, then a flood of Disney+ shows followed. Some landed, some did not, and the mixed results clearly pushed Lucasfilm to be pickier about what gets the green light.
After closing the sequel trilogy with Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, the franchise stepped away from the big screen for seven years. It returns to theaters this year with Jon Favreau's The Mandalorian & Grogu. In the meantime, the small screen has been the lab, and the newest experiment just hit big.
Maul - Shadow Lord is a legit hit
Star Wars: Maul - Shadow Lord, an animated series now streaming on Disney+, is pulling in eye-popping numbers: 98% from critics and 89% from viewers on Rotten Tomatoes. Yes, Darth Maul is a familiar name, which always helps, but name recognition alone does not buy those scores. Dave Filoni and his team clearly tapped into something that is working right now.
The shift: grounded, morally gray, and way more interesting
Star Wars has always defined itself around the Jedi/Sith split. Luke Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Darth Vader, Emperor Palpatine — that whole pantheon is the foundation. But the most exciting recent stories are not worshipping at that altar. They are smaller, scrappier, and messier.
Andor set the tone, The Mandalorian doubled down (and no, Grogu is not a Jedi), and now Maul - Shadow Lord keeps it going. Here, Maul is not a proper Sith lord playing politics with empires. He is an outsider carving out power in the criminal underworld. That lane is compelling because characters like this can actually change in front of us. Han Solo basically wrote the playbook: not a Jedi, not a Sith, starts self-interested, ends up revealing a core of decency and becoming essential to the Rebellion.
When Star Wars zooms in on these kinds of arcs, two good things happen. One, the payoff is cleaner because the growth is obvious. Two, the storytelling avoids galaxy-shaking canon landmines that split the fanbase down the middle. You get stakes without rewriting the franchise every other week.
Why this lane looks like the future
- Grounded, morally gray leads are connecting with fans and critics — Maul - Shadow Lord at 98% critics/89% audience says it all.
- Stories on the edges of the map let Lucasfilm experiment without breaking core canon.
- The Disney+ era proved hit-or-miss, but the recent run (Andor, The Mandalorian, now Maul) shows a clear pattern worth sticking to.
- Filoni and company are steering the brand toward character-first arcs, not lore dumps — and it is paying off.
The bottom line
If you have been waiting for Star Wars to stop chasing capital-I Importance and just tell sharp stories about complicated people, this is your moment. Maul - Shadow Lord is exactly the sort of show that makes the universe feel big again without needing another Death Star to prove it.
Star Wars: Maul - Shadow Lord is streaming now on Disney+.