Darth Maul is just a hulked out...thing.....with a double ended light saber to make the fanboys go nuts. Nothing about E1 is redeemable for the larger picture fanedit.

The Empire as seen in 4-6 is xenophobic and while they outsource to bounty hunters in V it is otherwise white human and male. I find Maul to not fit into this even if in terms of TPM we are talking proto-Empire. Maul is ultimately a dumb villian that serves as a lackey for the proto-Emperor who, like Fett in V/VI is dispatched too easily and quickly.

Dooku falls to a similar fate. There is ample opportunity here to have a Lando-esque character whose allegiance is ambiguous and the opportunity is squandered. Maul should have never been there, imagine E1 if Dooku was the agent of Palpatine and didn't die at the end and was ported into E2 as something more than a weak plot device.