Exclusive: What Star Wars: The Acolyte Is Actually About
We've exclusively learned more details for Star Wars: The Acolyte, the upcoming Disney+ series.
This article is more than 2 years old
Leslye Headland, the mind behind Star Wars: The Acolyte, has been quick enough to jump on for interviews about her writing process and love of Star Wars. However, she isn’t giving us a lot of details. What is the new show actually about? It’s fair enough that Lucasfilm knows they can give us only a title. Even with just that, most Star Wars fans will be happy enough to tune in the moment they stream the show on Disney+. However, with all the new shows coming, fans want to know what will make Acolyte special. Now, our trusted and proven inside source has shared details with us on the main character driving the upcoming series.
The main character for Star Wars: The Acolyte will be ready for fight scenes. The character will be played by a young woman of color. Our source says they haven’t yet found the actress for the role, and they’re open to the possibilities, but are ideally looking for an Asian actress to play the lead. Their lead character will be in her late teens or early twenties. She’ll need to be someone comfortable with athletic performances on screen because the character will know martial arts. As the Acolyte name has implied for Star Wars fans, our source says that yes, the lead character will work for the Sith. The show, which we’ve previously learned takes place in the High Republic era, will be focused on the dark side of the Force.
Typically in Star Wars canon, we’ve seen the term “Acolyte” as referring to an apprentice for a Sith, someone in training at the beginning of the path on the dark side. With everything our source has been able to confirm, it feels safe to say that the young woman lead will be a Sith Acolyte. This gives the character the perfect perspective if we want to see a show that will teach us more about what the dark side of the Force really means and why someone would choose it. Our main character in Star Wars: The Acolyte will be at a point in her life where she’s discovering that for herself. Along the way, she’ll be able to shed new understanding for us on how one becomes a Sith Lord. And she’ll be doing it during the High Republic era.
Let’s take a look at what the studio has shared with us before about Star Wars: The Acolyte so we can put this new information into perspective. Here’s the very little that they’ve shared about the show after announcing it, which actually fits into a single tweet.
While we haven’t seen the High Republic pictured on screen before, it’s an area that fans have wanted to see the studio dive deeper with. A Star Wars creator who wants to work with rich material already established in the universe, and who wants to better explore what the dark side of the Force is really about, should definitely work within the High Republic era. It’s full of books and comic series for a good reason. The final days of the High Republic put this series probably 200 years before the movies we’ve seen from George Lucas. This is before Palpatine moved to take over the galaxy.
What will make this time period particularly special for Star Wars: The Acolyte is that the Jedi are thriving and not at war with the Sith. If we’re going to be watching a show following a young woman as she climbs the Sith ranks, it’s better that we’re not going to see her fighting Jedi. It would be harder to get on her side. Instead, this show will take place at a time when the Republic is fairly peaceful. While most Star Wars characters that we know won’t be around, Yoda will likely be middle-aged, so he may yet show up in the series.
With the show set up as a mystery-thriller full of dark secrets in the High Republic, our main character is going to be rising in the ranks, learning what those dark secrets are, teaching us more about what it meant to be on the dark side of the Force long before Darth Vader was on the scene, and apparently, doing it all with a lot of fun fight scenes. This is definitely going to be something different from what Disney+ is offering us so far with their Star Wars lineup, which is extremely promising. Hopefully, they’ll throw a release date our way soon.
