Something that often gets forgotten because Star Wars has changed over time is that originally the over reliance on smooth, sterile, controlled technology and specifically the mechanical replacement of life wasn't just an aesthetic choice
It's more than just that the rebels used outdated and cast off technology because they're a rag-tag group of vagabonds and smugglers. It's that the empire replaces life with technology. Machines in the rebel alliance are artifacts of people doing the best they can with what they have, but Lucas was trying to use the machines of the empire as a symbol of overwhelming, systemic control even of a person's very body.
So when Anakin and when Luke lose an arm during their jedi journey, it's supposed to be a sign that they are turning and it's leaving permanent scars that will never heal. They're touched by empire. Grevious having an entirely robot body is supposed to be a sign that he is too robot to ever reintegrate with people ever again. Vader being a big cyborg is the sign that he must die for the good guys to win because he is too far gone. His very body is his own condemnation. We're not supposed to see any of the driods, even C-3PO or R2D2, as deserving of labor rights even though we're supposed to dislike slavers. The horror of slavery here is not the ownership or abuse or loss of freedom, it's being treated like a robot or an appliance socially, legally, and philosophically. It's spiritual death when the biomechanical machine lives on.
Smarter people than I have talked at length about how Lucas wants to borrow the drama of an anti-slavery story, but has unpacked racism and sexism that seeps into the Star Wars story and ends up defending slavery, if by accident. Lucas also relies quite heavily on the pervasiveness of ableism in his intended audience in the 70's to communicate that the man with a full body mobility aid and respirator is inherently evil before he gets a chance to even do anything.
This doesn't have to be the end all be all of the symbology, the way that Star Wars has changed over time has retroactively made it into a surprisingly positive representation of disability being properly accommodated for while not being eugenically corrected and with a combination of new writers and some retconning the slavery issue has, changed.
But my point is, the writing will always be fighting itself if anyone writing within this story ignores this aspect of one of the most central themes in the original story: the horror of man turned into machines.
What is interesting to me is how Darth Maul bridges the change in the focus of the story. He wasn't supposed to ever come back. He was supposed to be a Boba Fett type of marketing scheme to sell merchandise without giving away the story as the second trilogy was being filmed, promoted, and released. But the audience of 12 year old little boys loved him. He outsold most of anything else whenever his face was slapped on it.
So fandom does what fandom does and starts speculating on how a fully bisected man thrown down a trash shoot could miraculously survive. Many of the suggestions involved this handy-dandy cyborg explanation since cybernetic prosthetics capable of fully replacing lost limbs have been in the property since the very beginning. Some of them involved a Darth Maul cult reincarnating or reviving him or providing a body for him to possess with the force. Some of them involved him smashing his pieces back together and using the force to heal it somehow.
The new generation doesn't view disability nor technology like the old generation. The major theme of humanity being replaced by machines, which was an absolutely massively common theme in sci-fi leading up to Star Wars and a natural theme of the entire genre until only very recently, is completely lost on the following generations. Someone who uses a prosthetic is not seen as less human, no, they got a super cool claw arm now.
A comic with the Lucasfilm stamp of approval turns him into a mechanical dryder type creature (he was very much so a reference to the DND creature) too mentally destroyed to return to the major conflict to explain why he never came back. It had a mixed reception, as far as I remember, at first, but it has Maul's face on it. That's all it needs to be wildly popular. Lucasfilm starts loosing money, so now they're going back to putting Maul everywhere to make it sell. The Clone Wars is put into production without a lot of certainty that it would be profitable, but guess what they did when it got lackluster reviews? They put Maul in it. With a nod and a wink to the fandom that kept Maul alive when he shouldn't be, they put him back in one of the major Star Wars wars.
Maul was introduced back when Lucas was still directly controlling the story. He is not himself machine because he is what Anakin will grow into, a drafted young man with a patriotic heart who will be needlessly thrown away. Anakin goes through this phase later in the trilogy and then progresses to become a cyborg as he is one of the few young men who grow up in war and tragically only die spiritually as a result of it. The war remakes them into a war machine instead of killing them with their friends. Maul isn't allowed to progress to this point, because he is cut down in his prime by a well meaning opposing force who cannot know or sympathize with why he is trying to kill them. Remember, Star Wars was originally an analogy for the Vietnam War. Anakin's journey in the second trilogy is of a well meaning ROTC kid who joins for the cause instead of being drafted like Luke was. Maul's is that same journey, but viewed from the outside and cut in half.
However, then Maul gets un-cut in half and put back in after the point that Lucas was in the process of stepping away from a lot of the story writing and after the point where technology bad is lost thematically.
He demands that a writer confront a major theme of the original trilogy just by asking "how does Maul, and the people around Maul, react to his robot legs?" He's not the only such character, but he is one that bridges the attitude change from who gets a cybernetic prosthetic, when do they get it, and how do they get it being a major symbolic moment to be used sparingly to cybernetics being an accepted reality of this world.
What I find interesting is that Dave Filoni, who worked very closely with Lucas on The Clone Wars writes Maul as being resentful of his legs and as always having his absolutely necessary prosthetics to achieving full independence and in fact staying alive inflicted on him. I made the joke in the past that every time Maul almost dies he wakes up with a new pair of legs to call attention to this, even though I didn't have it as a full thought yet. I find it very poignant that Filoni and Witwer together have created a story where Maul tries to shake off and beat down the pain of injuries to his legs like he appears to be used to doing in the past. In the old extended lore he's firmly a masochist who uses pain to fuel his power. Pre-Lotho Minor he would be able to take a saber tap to the thigh, beat it when the leg wouldn't work, and use the pain for his power. He literally can't do that Shadowlord because pain isn't just a thing that happens sometimes. It's a sign of damage. Maybe a leg can heal, but a prosthetic can't. He has to baby the damage to his cybernetics because a robot leg can't use other muscles to compensate. It can't power through. If the wires and metal are cut, causing pain, they're cut. It's interesting that in this way his robot legs are forcing him to treat his body different specifically because they can't be abused and still work.
I would love to see them continue this theme because it could also confront the droid slavery thing in the original trilogy. There's a message here that the way a person treats something or someone labeled as an acceptable target of abuse is a sign of how they would treat anyone if they believed it would benefit them or that they could get away with it. Maul in Shadowlord is showing this backwards, as I am arguing him abusing his flesh is what leads him to abuse his metal, but him being unable to grow will be an interesting opportunity to examine the over all concept.
