The Acolyte can and should indulge in Star Wars sequel trilogy lore
polygon.comEver since George Lucas claimed the “echoes” between his original and prequel Star Wars trilogies were “poetry,” the mega-franchise has faced criticism of trapping characters in an everything-is-connected universe. When Kid Anakin is building C-3PO and Boba Fett’s dad is the base DNA for the Stormtroopers, Star Wars’ poetry suddenly looked more like Mad Libs than William Blake.
True to form, Lucasfilm’s newest series, The Acolyte, is forming similarechoes (hey, a show about twins!) and Easter eggs (turns out folks have a lot of strong feelings about Ki-Adi-Mundi). But its 100-year distance from known Skywalker Saga storytelling feels like expansion, the way history should. George R.R. Martin gets the approach — look at House of the Dragon — and The Acolyte creator Leslye Headland, mining the High Republic era, comes closer than most of her Star Wars contemporaries.
In episode 5, “Night,” Headland and The Acolyte’s writing team make a direct connection to a Big Star Wars thing, with the potential for an even loftier end goal: an embrace of sequel-trilogy lore. At least, I hope it is, because I am here for the Knights of Ren.
[Ed. note: This post contains major spoilers for The Acolyte episode 5.]
Picking up where episode 4, “Day,” left off, “Night” is wall-to-wall lightsaber action as the Master slices his way through Jedi adversaries, and Mae and Osha deal with their shit. A face off with Jecki Lon (Dafne Keen) finally takes the Master’s metal face… off… for the show’s big reveal: It’s been Qimir, a so-called smuggler who turns out to be a wannabe Sith Master who hoped Mae was his ticket to the big time.
When Sol asks him what he wants his answer is simple, if nebulous: “Freedom. The freedom to wield my power the way I like without having to answer to Jedi like you. I want a pupil, an acolyte. But this one went back on our deal.”
Star Wars fandom went into a meltdown after “Day,” when the aforementioned Ki-Adi-Mundi popped up at the Jedi morning meeting to discuss
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