Star Wars Fans Are Raving About The Darth Maul Show Trailer For One Reason

"Star Wars" shows aren't coming quite as fast and furious as they were a few years ago, but fans of the franchise's animated output have a big one to get excited about in April. "Star Wars: Maul — Shadow Lord," a 10-episode series starring the fan-favorite Sith-turned-antihero, premieres on Disney+ on April 6th, with two episodes dropping per week until Star Wars Day on May 4th. A new trailer for the show has sparked a lot of buzz among fans, with many raving about one thing in particular: the stunning animation.

Though they get less attention than the live-action "Star Wars" offerings, the animated series have delivered some of the biggest highlights of the Disney "Star Wars" era. That's due in no small part to the visual style that Lucasfilm has developed, which started in 2008 with the "Clone Wars" movie. That aesthetic has stayed pretty consistent ever since, though "Star Wars Rebels" and "Star Wars Resistance" changed things up in larger ways. But what fans have enjoyed recently on shows like "The Bad Batch" and "Tales of the Jedi" is a direct evolution of those early "Clone Wars" seasons.

The difference, of course, is that it all looks much, much better now, and "Maul — Shadow Lord" looks to be the most striking animated "Star Wars" series yet. "The upgraded clone wars [sic] style animation looks so insane," one fan wrote under the official trailer on YouTube, in a comment that currently has over 12,000 likes from others excited about the new show.

Season 7 of "Star Wars: The Clone Wars" blew viewers away with its incredible visuals, kicking off a golden era for Lucasfilm Animation. In the years since, the division once headed up directly by Dave Filoni — now president of Lucasfilm — has dropped one stunning season after another, playing with different sub-styles but holding true to a cohesive overall look. The new Darth Maul series is taking things a step further with a more stylized twist, as seen in the recent trailer. Lighting has been one of the main tools used to make the "Star Wars" animated universe look so good, and the "Maul" trailer bumps that up to 11, with a distortion and blurred color effect on details like Maul's lightsaber that almost looks like watercolor at times.

Fans were quick to praise the aesthetic. "It's been a long time since I've been so impressed by such a high technical level, especially the use of colors and lighting," Reddit user u/Johnny0230 wrote on a trailer thread on r/StarWars. Similar praise fills the comments section of the trailer post on YouTube, with one post calling the animation "absolutely gorgeous" getting over 26,000 likes.

It's a distinct strength of the animated "Star Wars" shows that each one is better-looking than the last, thanks to the slow evolution of tech and experience at Lucasfilm Animation. Now that the studio is trying something new with "Maul" — a show aimed at an older audience that lands between the "Tales" miniseries and the longer seasons of "Bad Batch" — it opens up even more exciting possibilities for what could come next.

Lucasfilm Animation seems to have hardly rested since work began on "The Clone Wars," moving from one series to the next and gradually carving out a distinct corner of the "Star Wars" universe that feels both unique and pivotal. "Maul — Shadow Lord" is only the latest entry in that legacy, but it also might hint at the future.

"The Bad Batch" is one of the best things Disney has done with "Star Wars," and certainly the most underrated show Lucasfilm has released on Disney+. At the same time, it makes sense why it failed to make much of a splash outside the core fandom. The first two seasons were 16 episodes each, with 15 for the third, and a release schedule that typically premiered only one a week. That format put the show in a difficult position, as it was already trying to balance the younger audience that had gravitated to "Clone Wars" and "Rebels" with more mature storylines about the early years of the Empire. Week to week, one of two very different audiences was left behind, and the data is still unclear as to how streaming works for the kinds of children's animation that previously excelled on traditional television.

"Shadow Lord" offers a more compelling, less divided vision for future "Star Wars" animation — a 10-episode season released over five weeks, maximizing its budget and appealing to a specific audience. It's easy to imagine a similar approach working for shorter-form series all across the "Star Wars" Disney+ timeline, provided "Maul" ends up being as good as it looks. For now, at least, the fans seem incredibly excited.