Spoilers follow for folks who aren't caught up with Star Wars Rebels.

Sam Witwer is one of those rare Hollywood talents who seems to be able to do it all. Typically cast in roles that require a strong jaw and an impressive physique, Witwer’s good looks belie his self-professed nerdy and introspective personality, putting him in that rare crossover category with the likes of Vin Diesel and Joe Manganiello. While that trio has a fondness for “Dungeons & Dragons” in common, it’s on Star Wars that Witwer’s lifelong love and obsession is focused. And it’s the famed franchise’s animated series and video games that have brought Witwer’s voice to the attention of legions of fans around the world.

In the video game world, Witwer has voiced Darth Vader’s secret apprentice Starkiller in the Star Wars: The Force Unleashed series, played the role of Emperor Palpatine, and voiced the surprisingly resilient Darth Maul, as well. But it’s his performance as the former Sith in Star Wars: The Clone Wars and, specifically, Star Wars Rebels that we focused on in a recent, in-depth chat. Here's your final spoiler warning.

Even if Witwer wasn't a super-fan for all things Star Wars, you shouldn’t question his nerd status; it even extends to his dogs. His rescue dog Leonard and foster dog Buster are both named for sci-fi icons: Leonard Nimoy (Star Trek) and Buster Crabbe (Flash Gordon). (They're both doing well, by the way.) It's Star Wars, however, that's easily one of his biggest and longest-running pop culture obsessions:

As a fan, the idea of fleshing out anything in Star Wars is like a dream beyond what anyone should be allowed experience. Star Wars is something that’s been beloved to me my entire life. Fans of my age will remember that there’s a time when Star Wars went away; huge when you were growing up and then past 1984, it started fading from consciousness. It still retained all the respect, but it wasn’t something anyone talked about. [To] my surprise, West End Games in 1987 came out with the Star Wars roleplaying game. At the time, I was a D&D-playing nerd, so, “Now they’re coming out with D&D but it’s Star Wars?” It seemed like the product was catered entirely to you; me and my friends never let go of Star Wars, even when it had faded from public consciousness.

 

What really made us fans who were way more doggedly devoted to this was that Star Wars roleplaying game from West End Games because suddenly you could open up a Star Wars source book and read about the fact that … there’s a crystal at the heart of a lightsaber? Wait what?! We learned that there’s a guy named Palpatine, that was the name of the Emperor, and that somehow through manipulating greedy trade barons he got the Republic to rot from within and turn into an Empire, he made himself the President and then the Emperor … we’re like, “What the hell…” Suddenly this world opened up in a way that it hadn’t from just those three movies. [They] hinted at a larger world beyond the frame … but this roleplaying game started cracking this open even more.

As the available Star Wars mythology deepened, so did Witwer's appreciation for the broader implications and applications of the story:

If I were to go back and interrupt 12 or 13-year-old me, playing the Star Wars roleplaying game with my friends in my basement in Glenview, Illinois, and just say, “Hey, listen, you’re going to be working in Star Wars. You’re going to be doing a lot of stuff. In fact, Star Wars is going to employ you for 10 years.” It wouldn’t compute for me. The kid would have had a heart attack, he would have come out of a coma and still not believed.

 

To say that my love for Star Wars runs deep is a tremendous understatement because I just don’t know that there’s a pop culture mythology out there that’s as useful in educating and training and teaching young people about the curveballs that life can throw you, especially in situations that require a moral response. Star Wars is kind of the ultimate teaching tool for young people when it comes to that.

Like many of us, Witwer's first exposure to Darth Maul was in watching Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace. Unlike many of us, however, his introduction to the character was quite unique:

I was very impressed by the presence and performance of Ray Park. I only loved the character of Darth Maul more because I got to meet Ray Park right there at the theater I saw The Phantom Menace at. We saw it at a preview, so we’d seen it before everyone, and then we were going on opening night. Ray Park was there, and no one knew who he was because they hadn’t seen the film yet, but we knew exactly who he was. I went up to Ray with my friends—I was training to be an actor at the time but I was not a working actor yet—and shook his hand, said he was awesome, and he was very nice and talked to us for a while. Little did I know that I would be stealing his face some 10 years later.

Witwer has played Darth Maul, later simply Maul, in both Star Wars: The Clone Wars and Star Wars Rebels, until just this season when the character met his end. Here's how Witwer reacted to realizing the end was nigh:

The moment that Dave [Filoni] told me that he was coming to Rebels, I felt that we were heading down the path to the conclusion of this character’s story. I’d been waiting for the conclusion ever since Clone Wars. So I was very, very satisfied with how he went out. I thought it was wonderful, I thought it was beautiful, I thought it was extremely well-executed on the part of the animation, lighting team, sound team, and the direction; everything was incredible.

The final confrontation between Maul and Kenobi looks simple on screen and it passes by fairly quickly. Luckily the Season 3 Blu-ray does a wonderful job of explaining the scene's subtext and painstaking detail that went into crafting the pivotal moment. Witwer lays it out as follows:

There needed to be a poetic symmetry to the entire thing. I think it’s about showing the growth of Obi Wan and how these two characters, both apprentices but they were opposites, mirror images of each other … to see where one’s life led and the other one’s stagnated at a very early age because of an obsession. There’s Obi Wan, who also makes mistakes but decided to move beyond them, and we see that illustrated in the episode.

 

That wonderful moment when Maul sparks up his lightsaber and Obi Wan immediately picks up his and goes into the Ewan McGregor pose … he’s almost about to commit the same mistakes that he made in the Clone Wars, the guy who engages in violence. Yes, it was in self-defense, but he was a General in a war, and that was not what he was supposed to be doing as a General. He goes into the Ewan McGregor pose, almost not having learned a lesson, and he gives it a moment, takes a breath, and then goes into the Alec Guinness pose, which is a man who was not interested in fighting. He was interested in ending the conflict, he was not interested in fighting.

 

I love the fact that he realizes that he can queue up Maul by going into his master’s pose, Qui-Gon Jinn’s pose, not only honoring his master’s sacrifice, but queuing up Maul to try to kill Obi Wan with the same move that he killed Qui-Gon with, while all at the same time making the statement that Obi Wan has become the master rather than the apprentice. It’s just a beautiful, wonderful moment.

 

Maul needs Obi Wan to forgive him, to acknowledge his own humanity. More than anything, I think he needs Obi Wan to take him out of this vicious cycle that he’s put himself in and give him a merciful death. And then when Maul is defeated, he’s cradled by Obi Wan in the same way that Obi Wan cradled Qui-Gon, a man who Darth Maul killed. Or how he cradled Satine, who Darth Maul killed. Darth Maul gets the same treatment from Obi Wan as Obi Wan gave Darth Maul’s victims; there’s something really wonderful about that as far as stating where Obi Wan’s morality is living, what his moral code is. That’s Star Wars when it’s done right.

 

But there’s one flaw left that has yet to be reconciled for Obi Wan. Maul asks if Luke is the Chosen One and Obi Wan says, “Yes, he is,” because that’s what Obi Wan needs to believe. He needs to be in the desert saving the Chosen One because everyone cannot imagine a world in which Darth Vader can be redeemed; that’s Luke’s job in the story, that’s what Luke brings to the table, he brings a solution that no one else can see, which is why it’s so important that he survive. People complain about [who the Chosen One is] but you have to understand that Obi Wan is not omniscient, he’s still human. Obi Wan is enlightened, but he’s not perfect.

It's important to Witwer and the creative team behind Star Wars Rebels to give it their all, meaning that a lot of work goes on behind the scenes to give die-hard fans every last ounce of enjoyment while they watch:

We don’t just perform these scenes, we talk about them a lot before we do it. Dave [Filoni] will go into these monologues for about an hour before the episode records talking about the story and the significance of the story and why it’s important and how it fits in with the rest of the story of Star Wars. When it came to Darth Maul, we had talks like three months in advance of even recording the first session about the arc of the story and how to perform it right, how to get it so that it fleshes out Anakin Skywalker’s story and Luke Skywalker’s story because they’re all related to each other. When Star Wars fans go deep with this stuff, that’s why we do all this extra work. You’re right to be able to interface with it on a very surface level if you want to; if you’re the kind of fan who wants to go watch it, have some fun, turn off your brain and watch lightsaber fights, you’re more than welcome. But if you want to take it deeper, yes, we are trying to infuse it with as much meaning as we possibly can, we’re trying to hide as much subtext in there as we possibly can.

Just as fans have had to say goodbye to Maul, so too did Witwer. Again, his perspective on this is a unique one:

The funny thing is, the day after we performed Maul dying, and I had my emotional feelings about that, the very next day I was recording Maul for Battlefront II. It was kind of a weird thing. These characters don’t really die. The whole point of Star Wars is, when you make a character who’s memorable enough, whether he dies in the story or not, people keep going back to revisit the story so, in a way, he never really dies.

 

Ray Park came in and created a character with extraordinary presence and a wonderful performance. Peter Serafinowicz gave that character this dark, intriguing voice. And then I got to flesh out a bunch of character traits about who that person was and is. In the future, him being so popular, it’s conceivable that some other actor could step into his leather boots, as it were, and that’d be wonderful. If that happens, that means I did my job. That’s what it’s all about.

With Maul now behind him, here's what Witwer has in store for the near future:

I’m doing a lot of different things that I’ve never really done before: I’m developing a pilot script with FX right now for an animated series; writing a book about the history of Dungeons & Dragons with my brother, and Kyle Newman and Jon Peterson, which is going very, very well; I’m finishing my album; I’m continuing to do the odd acting gig which takes me out of town; I’m also shooting a lot and recording a lot here in town for a video game called Days Gone, which I’ve been working on for a few years. I’m constantly having to shift gears. This life is strange, but it’s been very, very good to me.

Witwer will soon be streaming a campaign in the Star Wars RPG with Freddie Prinze Jr. and the cast of Star Wars Rebels, so keep an eye on their Twitter accounts and Twitch pages for more news on that front. In the meantime, Star Wars Rebels Season 3 is available now on DVD and Blu-ray, so pick up your copy and get caught up before the fourth and final season hits Disney XD this fall!