Darth Maul tracks down Queen Padmé Amidala and her companions in Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace, and while his method is implied in the film, he may have found them using a cruel dark side power. The Sith exclusively call upon the dark side of the Force for their power, using its corrupt energy to gain unnatural powers. While the Jedi tune into and use the Force by being at peace with the natural galaxy around them, the Sith harm others and spread suffering in their perpetual quest for power. The Trade Federation’s brutal occupation of Naboo could have played perfectly into Darth Sidious and Darth Maul’s plans in one specific way, allowing the Sith apprentice to find his targets on Tatooine.
Darth Maul was one of the last Dark Lords in Darth Bane’s Sith lineage, and as such was privy to countless generations of Sith history and deadly dark side techniques. In Legends, Darth Maul was far more focused on the martial aspects of Sith training, serving primarily as an enforcer and assassin for Darth Sidious before his death on Naboo. In canon, Maul’s backstory and species were changed, with Star Wars: The Clone Wars also retroactively having him survive The Phantom Menace and becoming a deadly third party in the titular war, seizing control of Death Watch and founding a vast network of criminals called the Shadow Collective. Maul’s canon history shows that he was skilled in more than just combat, demonstrating dastardly manipulation skills, similar to his master.
Darth Maul’s specific method of tracing Padmé to Tatooine was explained in the 2012 novel Darth Plagueis, coinciding with both The Phantom Menace’s implication and his near-exclusive focus on the warrior side of Sith Lordship. In canon, no specific explanation is given, other than Maul referring to a trace leading him to Tatooine. The term can refer to technological means, but given Maul’s more varied skillset in the canon timeline, he could have easily used a more arcane and cruel type of trace to find the Queen. The holographic message of Sio Bibble pleading for help in response to Trade Federation atrocities could easily have been real in canon, allowing Darth Maul to track down Padmé by following a trace that dark side users can follow more skillfully than anyone else: the suffering of sapient beings.
Darth Maul's Dark Side Trick To Trace The Heroes
As Yoda warned a young Anakin Skywalker in The Phantom Menace, fear is the path to the dark side, with suffering being the final step in this grim journey. Indeed, Anakin suffered the loss of his mother, his wife, most of his body, and his ideals in the process of becoming Darth Vader, rendering a once kind-hearted person a mechanical monster who enforces an authoritarian regime. Darth Maul, having been raised by Darth Sidious (and having been born a Nightbrother of Dathomir in canon) is extremely familiar with suffering, as a Sith Lord, and could have followed a “trail” of suffering to find Padmé on Tatooine.
As shown in the very first Star Wars film, sapient suffering causes disturbances in the Force, with the Galactic Empire’s destruction of Alderaan deeply disturbing Obi-Wan Kenobi, a former Jedi Master and General in the Clone Wars who’d felt his fair share of suffering on the battlefield. For Sith, who revel in such horrors, the Trade Federation’s deadly persecution of Naboo’s people, through starvation and other deadly means, would have been torturous for Queen Amidala and her companions to discover through Sio Bibble’s transmission. Darth Maul could trace these feelings through the dark side of the Force, and follow the “scent” to Tatooine.
Other Sith Who Use Suffering To Find Their Foes
The Phantom Menace wouldn’t be the only instance of Sith Lords using suffering to find or draw out their foes. In The Empire Strikes Back, Darth Vader tortures Luke Skywalker’s friends in Cloud City, tormenting the aspiring Jedi until he travels to Bespin to rescue them, despite knowing that it’s a trap set by Vader. Along with a phony message to return to Coruscant, Darth Sidious, now Emperor Palpatine, uses the mass murder of Jedi throughout the galaxy during Order 66 to draw in survivors to their deaths at the Jedi Temple, which is teeming with brainwashed Clone Troopers in Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith.
Following his return in the canon universe, Maul uses transmissions of suffering to draw out his enemies during the Clone Wars. On Raydonia, Maul murdered countless civilians until Obi-Wan traveled to the Outer Rim world to confront his old foe. Maul employed a similar strategy at the end of the war, oppressing the people of Mandalore in the hopes of confronting Obi-Wan and Anakin, but facing off against Ahsoka Tano to his surprise. While Sith Lords typically bait their foes by making others suffer, Maul could have easily followed the trail of suffering from Padmé and her entourage in The Phantom Menace, showing an inventive side of Maul that is consistent with clever, albeit horrific, actions during the Clone Wars and the reign of the Empire.
How Darth Maul Found The Heroes In Legends
Darth Plagueis reveals the exact strategy that Darth Maul used to trace Padmé to Tatooine in The Phantom Menace, and it doesn’t involve any use of the dark side. While the Trade Federation was torturing the Naboo populace through starvation, Sio Bibble’s transmission to the Queen was fabricated by Darth Maul. While the Queen avoided sending a response at the behest of Obi-Wan Kenobi, knowing that it’d be traceable, Darth Maul ensured that by simply receiving the message, he’d be able to track down the recipient. Maul’s plan worked, as shown in the film, and while he failed to capture the Queen, his brief battle with Qui-Gon Jinn finally revealed to the Jedi that the Sith still existed.
Darth Maul’s Legends-era method of tracking down the Queen isn’t necessarily as interesting as the canon theory of him using the dark side, but it’s far more consistent with Darth Maul’s simpler characterization in the film and his Legends-era backstory as a fighter first and foremost. Darth Maul used a clever tactic to track down his foes, but it’s a strategy one might expect from an elite bounty hunter or assassin, which the Legends-era Darth Maul served Sidious as more than anything else. The potential canon explanation of Darth Maul tracking down Padmé using the dark side and Naboo’s suffering in Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace is both plausible and befitting of his characterization.