Hasbro loves Darth Maul.  That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but they sure took every opportunity to get new and interesting variations of the characters into the line.  There wasn’t much to work with in The Phantom Menace.  A deluxe version of the figure could pretty much cover all of his costume changes.  We even got representation of Maul as a hologram.  He was popular among fans too, so it seemed to make sense that Hasbro mined some concept artwork and the old EU (canon and otherwise) to give us a nice lineup of off-screen Mauls.  Of course, now that he made another film appearance in Solo, you’d think Hasbro would have jumped at that opportunity already.  Alas, it’s another sign o’ the times that we have no Solo Maul.

This figure is a repack of the 2002 Saga figure.  As such, you get the trifecta of the preposed action stance, a built in action feature, and an embedded magnet.  You’d think those things would doom this figure right off the bat.  Well, somehow, they don’t.  It’s certainly not what we’d be looking for in 2020, but I have to say that even though this Darth Maul is packed with things we hate, it somehow executes them well enough that it manages to be a decent addition to your collection

This version is called “Sith Training Darth Maul, and has him wearing Sithy robes that are similar to what we see on screen, but with some snazzy red trim.  It’s a good look.  The figure sculpt is striking upon first glance.  Upon closer inspection, the articulation and pre-posed sculpt leave you unable to get a whole lot of display variations out of it.  The joints are all swivel, and the lower body has almost zero posability.  Maul can hold the included lightsaber in either hand, but the metal hilt is meant to interact with the magnet in the right hand.  The metal hilt is a winner, even if you aren’t interested in the weak magnet.  Fortunately the right hand can still grip the lightsaber, even if the magnet leaves something to be desired.

The action feature is also pretty terrible, but it isn’t horrendously obtrusive.  There are two dials on Maul’s back, kind of where his shoulder blades would be.  One raises and lowers the right arm, the other spins the right forearm.  The goal here was to allow you to have the figure twirl and slash the lightsaber.  The feature is underwhelming, and would have been better left out, but again, it doesn’t really ruin things as you might think it would.

In addition to the lightsaber, Maul comes with a training probe remote.  It’s a nice sculpt, and much better than some previous versions.  It has a removable clear stand, and looks great next to Maul.  Having the figure square off against the remote makes for a nice little vignette on your shelf.  It is what it is.  I’m not going to kill it, as it’s not meant to be screen accurate anyway.

The worst part of the figure is that it was a 4 year-old sculpt, very much dated as a kid-oriented SAGA figure, and it was straight repacked in the collector-driven TSC line.  Hasbro could have done better, but has we have seen during our TSC retrospective, the line was full of repacks and repaints.

I’ll give this a 5.  I kind of want to give it a 6, but the lack of posability makes it a near-statue, despite the ironic inclusion of an action feature.