A report has come out detailing a much different early script for ‘Obi-Wan Kenobi’ that featured Ray Park as Darth Maul, who is now cut.

With the Obi-Wan Kenobi trailer officially out, fans have had their first look at what we can expect in terms of characters that will appear in the series. Alongside what was shown in the trailer, it’s also been confirmed that Hayden Christensen will be reprising his role as Darth Vader to cross sabers with Obi-Wan once more.

It’s worth noting that the script didn’t always look the way we were able to see it embodied in the trailer. At one point Ray Park was attached to come back as Darth Maul and face off against Kenobi, with a young actor cast to play a boy Luke Skywalker as well. According to The Hollywood Reporter‘s source, this idea was scrapped after showrunner Deborah Chow showed early scripts to Dave Filoni and Jon Favreau, who were fresh off the success of The Mandalorian.

The duo told her they were concerned the idea of a Lone Wolf and Cub story like Grogu and Din Djarin in their show would cover ground that was too similar to their show. They reportedly encourage Chow to “go bigger” with her show and also helped push the idea of inserting Vader as the series big bad.

Before all of this happened, sources say the series was so far along with Ray Park coming back as Maul that he had already been sighted on set for pre-production and was involved in stunt training as well. Another source says footage of Maul had already begun being shot, although it could have been test footage.

While this is Disney’s explanation for Park’s removal from the show, fans have a different theory. Around the same time that the rewrites happened an incident in which Ray Park’s Instagram account posted a video of someone receiving oral sex occurred. While many allegations have been made that it was Ray Park and his wife, Lisa Park, in the video, and that the post was a form of revenge porn, Lisa has vehemently denied them at every step.

Fans are now theorizing this was the reason for Maul and Ray Park’s departure from the script. No comment has been made from Lucasfilm at this time.

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