During the Invasion of Naboo, a confrontation known as the Duel on Tatooine transpired. This battle pitted the Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn against the Sith Lord Darth Maul. Darth Sidious dispatched Maul to capture Queen Amidala of Naboo. She had bypassed the Trade Federation blockade of her home world and sought temporary sanctuary on Tatooine under Jinn's protection.
Maul successfully located the Queen's royal starship on Tatooine by tracing its transmissions. To confirm their presence, he deployed a probe droid. As Jinn prepared to board Anakin Skywalker, a new addition to their group, onto the Queen's starship for its departure to Coruscant, the galactic capital, Maul launched an ambush.
The duel was a swift, yet intense, clash. Maul immediately seized the advantage upon initiating the attack. Qui-Gon Jinn was taken aback by Maul's fearsome blend of speed, rage, and aggression, and appeared to weaken as the battle unfolded. He struggled to effectively defend against Maul's lethal lightsaber technique, as the Zabrak revelled in his first encounter with a Jedi Master. Although Maul would later employ a double-bladed lightsaber, his proficiency with a single blade nearly proved fatal for Jinn.
Jinn managed to stall Maul long enough for the ship to escape. Maul's sudden appearance revealed the Sith's resurgence to the Jedi Order, a group believed to have vanished nearly a millennium prior.
Darth Maul, a Sith Lord, pinpointed the location of Queen Padmé Amidala's vessel on Tatooine during the Trade Federation's invasion of the planet Naboo. The ship had landed there for repairs after fleeing Naboo. Following the Boonta Eve Classic 'podrace and the acquisition of hyperdrive components for the Queen's starship, Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn and the young Anakin Skywalker were headed towards the ship. Upon discovering the escapees' whereabouts, he hastened to intercept them.
Jinn sensed Darth Maul approaching as Anakin and Qui-Gon were running towards the ship, which was only a few yards away. He turned around to urge Anakin to hurry up and saw Maul approaching them on his speeder bike. Anakin promptly followed Qui-Gon's instruction to drop to the ground, narrowly avoiding being impaled by Maul's speeder. As the speeder approached Qui-Gon, Maul jumped off the bike at the Jedi, attacking before his feet even touched the ground. Jinn barely managed to block the initial attack. As Maul landed, he immediately followed up with an overhead strike, which Jinn deflected before launching his own attack. As Maul blocked Qui-Gon's blow, Jinn instructed Anakin to board the ship and tell them to take off.
While Anakin complied, Qui-Gon attempted to initiate his own offensive, but Maul easily deflected his overhead strike and unleashed a flurry of attacks. Jinn was forced back, struggling to defend himself, as he was surprised by the terrifying combination of agility, anger, and ferocity of Maul's lethal lightsaber technique.
When Anakin boarded the ship and informed the crew of the situation, they attempted a rescue by flying low towards the duel with the boarding ramp lowered. As Qui-Gon blocked a slash from Maul and countered, he noticed the approaching ship. Disengaging from the fight, Qui-Gon jumped aboard, entering just as the hatch closed and the ship sped away. As the ship soared into the sky, Maul was left seething on the desert floor.
After recovering from the duel, Jinn informed his apprentice, Obi-Wan Kenobi, that the mysterious stranger was undoubtedly pursuing the Queen. He also mentioned to Kenobi that the attacker was highly skilled in the Jedi arts, leading the Jedi Master to believe he was a Sith Lord.
Upon arriving on Coruscant, Jinn reported the incident to the Jedi High Council. They were skeptical of his claim, with Ki-Adi-Mundi stating that "the Sith have been extinct for a millennium," as the Order believed they had destroyed the Sith. Nevertheless, they committed to identifying the dark warrior.
Darth Maul later avenged his defeat in the duel by killing Jinn during a lightsaber duel on Naboo while retaking Theed Royal Palace. Kenobi later defeated Maul, who was believed to have perished after being cut in half and falling into a seemingly bottomless pit. However, his hatred for Kenobi kept him alive, and he somehow escaped Naboo, ending up on Lotho Minor for twelve years until his brother, the former Nightbrother Savage Opress, found him.
Despite Maul's defeat at the conclusion of the Naboo conflict, the Jedi High Council recognized that this warrior must have been a Sith. His ominous appearance at that time signaled a subtle imbalance in power between the Jedi and the Sith, something that had not been experienced for centuries. While the duel was a tactical stalemate, it marked the first known encounter between the Jedi and Sith in a millennium. The Jedi had believed the Sith to be extinct, and the duel on Tatooine was when the Sith finally revealed themselves to their ancient adversaries. This event coincided with the discovery of Anakin Skywalker, believed to be the Chosen One, and thus contributed to a series of events that, over the following years, led to the fulfillment of the Sith's millennia-long goals: the downfall of the Galactic Republic and the destruction of the Jedi Order.
In 2 BBY, Kenobi and Maul faced each other for the final time on Tatooine, a duel that Kenobi ultimately won by severing Maul's lightsaber, fatally wounding the Zabrak. Maul died, but not before learning that Obi-Wan was protecting the "Chosen One" who would avenge them and destroy the Sith.
The Duel on Tatooine made its debut in the 1999 film Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace, the initial entry in the Star Wars prequel trilogy. An earlier sequence in the script for The Phantom Menace depicted Darth Maul leaping onto the ramp of the Naboo Royal Starship after Qui-Gon Jinn, only for Jinn to swing his lightsaber and sever the ramp, knocking Maul off the ship and onto the ground. A promotional image for The Phantom Menace featured Kenobi and Maul in a lightsaber duel on Tatooine, which was shown in a February 1999 issue of Vanity Fair promoting the film. However, in the actual film, only Jinn and Maul clashed on Tatooine.
This lightsaber duel was also the first fight showing both the Jedi and Sith in their prime. One of George Lucas's primary goals for the prequel trilogy was to make the lightsaber fights "faster and more intense." This duel was presented early in The Phantom Menace and was intentionally brief to provide viewers with a preview of what was to come in the film's climax.
A deleted scene preceding this duel shows Qui-Gon destroying one of Maul's probe droids that is tracking him as he and Anakin leave Mos Espa. However, its removal from the theatrical release results in a somewhat disjointed transition, depicting Qui-Gon and Anakin running toward the Queen's ship before Maul attacks them (as Qui-Gon realizes after his encounter with the probe droid that they are being hunted), when they had previously been seen walking calmly to their destination.