The Acolyte
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Leslye Headland says that she mostly stays off the internet, which is about the smartest thing I can imagine doing in her position as The Acolyte’s showrunner, given what’s been happening online.
But she’s been happy to give interviews and explain her thought process and display her endless encyclopedic knowledge of Star Wars, and what she wanted to bring into The Acolyte.
Now that the show has aired its finale, she can talk more about her hopes for The Acolyte season 2 and what she can’t talk about gives us some clues as well. The new interview from Inverse is great, and features some solid quotes about what may be coming with season 2, should it actually exist:
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When asked about whether Osha and Qimir might decide to simply not be Sith, and become something else more free without labels:
“Yeah, I can’t talk to you about that.”
Welp. She also said they filmed a kiss scene between the two, but that wasn’t used, both saddening but also delighting “Oshamir” shippers.
When asked about if she knows season 2 is happening:
“I do not.”
When asked about things she has planned for a potential season:
Read More: NYT ‘Strands’ Hints, Spangram And Answers For Sunday, July 21
A relationship between Mae and Vernestra, now that Sol is dead.
Obviously more exploration between the “juicy” pairing of Osha and Qimir.
Expansion of the Plagueis cameo, and more stuff brought in from existing High Republic material and Legends as well. She’s talking with Pablo Hidalgo about pulling more characters from the High Republic like Vernesetra.
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On the #RenewTheAcolyte internet campaign:
It made her feel great and she loves that people are invested in the show. She’s especially happy with how the character of the Stranger unfolded, and she really enjoyed creating Aniseya, and wants to explore the concept of accidentally creating a religion through a desire to survive.
Again, it remains unclear if Disney is going to pull the trigger on The Acolyte season 2 due to its high cost and estimated low viewership. But it’s its first live-action High Republic series, which it has a lot invested into creatively, and clearly there are plans for a season 2 that would embrace things the current fanbase of the show loves. I do not think they care at all about the toxic YouTuber/Twitter/review bombing reaction to the series, and that won’t be a consideration.
I hope we learn more soon, but my guess is that it may be a while until we get confirmation one way or the other. I’m starting to have more hope, though.
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After four episodes of Star Wars: The Acolyte and three episodes of The Boys Season 4, the Audience Score for each of them has plummeted on Rotten Tomatoes, as the shows seem to be getting review bombed by unhappy fans.
When it comes to The Acolyte, the Critics Score stands at 85% while the Audience Score only has a 14% rating. Some fans are even review bombing the wrong project and going after the 2008 Australian horror film Acolytes, which is pretty hilarious.
As for The Boys Season 4, the series has a 95% rating from critics but only a 49% rating from audiences, which is the lowest of all three seasons. For context, The Boys Season 1 has 85%/95%, Season 2 has 97%/83%, and Season 3 is currently at 98%/75%.
So, you can see that the audience score has gradually been declining, but this latest season is the biggest drop yet.
There are a lot of reasons why these shows might not be connecting with fans that are driving them to tear them down on Rotten Tomatoes. A lot of the reviews are pretty mean-spirited.
I’ve never seen so much hate for a Star Wars project before The Acolyte came around. Some fans aren’t happy about some of the creative choices in the show, and many feel as though it doesn't fit with the rest of the Star Wars canon.
Others are not impressed with the show's quality and are generally unhappy with the direction the Star Wars franchise has been going.
Then there are those who are upset that the show is putting the focus on female characters, its diverse cast, and “woke” content.
When it comes to The Boys Season 4, I’ve seen a lot of people upset about its strong political messaging as we enter an already tense election year.
Now, The Boys has never really shied away from this kind of thing, but Season 4 puts it all out there when it comes to how they really feel about far-right views. This is something showrunner Eric Kripke freely acknowledged in a recent interview.
He said: "There’s just so few shows that can directly comment on the world we’re living in, and they get to do it as a cartoon. We get to hold up a mirror as a fantasy genre show.
“But again, because we’re just like, we’re right there. I mean, it’s all in the original comic. The comic is really political. It just, it’s political about the post-9/11 George Bush era."
"The show’s not subtle. It wears its politics on its sleeve. And it’s funny to rip on the madness on the right, and we get some shots in on the left of all the performative wokeness and everything."
"I'm just going to lean into it, and then the audience can sort of decide whether they want to watch or not. I mean, it’s almost become like 'South Park,' you know what I mean?"
Kripke has also made it clear he has little love for those who consider Homelander as a "hero."
What do you think about all of this?
There will be mild spoilers for the third episode of "Star Wars: The Acolyte," so beware.
"He can see things before they happen," Qui-Gon Jinn tells Shmi Skywalker about her son Anakin in "Star Wars: The Phantom Menace." He explains to her that if he had been born in the Republic, he'd have been identified early and trained as a Jedi. Then, curiously, he asks her who the boy's father was.
"There was no father," Anakin's mother tells the venerable Jedi. "I carried him. I gave birth. I can't explain what happened."
Qui-Gon explains later that this is a vergence in the Force and that Anakin (whose age was a struggle for George Lucas to decide) was conceived of the midi-chlorians themselves; the building blocks of life and a pathway through which living things can hear the will of the Force. This virgin birth took audiences by surprise, but it took the Jedi Council by surprise as well. "You refer to the prophecy of the one who will bring balance to the Force," Mace Windu tells Qui-Gon incredulously in response to this revelation. Then he asks, "You believe it's this boy?"
Qui-Gon died believing that Anakin would bring balance to the Force because of the nature of his birth and the prophecy. But where did the prophecy come from? And could there have been others before? The third episode of "Star Wars: The Acolyte" seems to indicate as much.
Mae and Osha don't have a father
In the latest episode of "Star Wars: The Acolyte", high in a mountain monastery reminiscent of Powell and Pressburger's stunning and rich "Black Narcissus," we are introduced to two characters of significant importance to Osha and Mae: their mothers. One is a Zabrak named Mother Koril, played by Margarita Levieva, and the other, Mother Aniseya, played by Jodie Turner-Smith.
Slowly, over the course of the episode, we learn more and more details about the exact parentage of the children beyond just calling these two women their mothers. First, we learn that Mother Koril is the one who carried Mae and Osha during pregnancy. Then, it's implied heavily that the Force was used to compel the conception and birth without a father.
In fact, the birth of the girls is taken as a miracle to the coven, and is something they keep secret from the outside world. Disaster only strikes when the Jedi learn of their existence. "Where is their father?" Master Indara asks Aniseya, echoing Qui-Gon's question to Shmi. "They have no father," Aniseya responds coolly.
As the witches argue about if they are going to allow these "deranged" monks to test Osha, Mother Koril puts a foot down. "I carried them." But Aniseya retorts, "I created them." To which Koril fires back, "And what happens if the Jedi discover how you created them?" There is no response.
If the midi-chlorians conceived Anakin Skywalker, it was heavily implied by Palpatine that his master had some hand in convincing the midi-chlorians to do so, though that always seemed a lie of the Sith. But what if Aniseya had learned to manipulate the midi-chlorians to create life the way Sidious implied the Sith were capable of? It seems as though Sidious exaggerated the power of the Sith, but there's nothing to say Aniseya doesn't have that power.
The prophecy of the Chosen One
During the course of "Star Wars: The Clone Wars" we were introduced to a planet called Mortis, redefining what we knew about the power of midi-chlorians and the prophecy of the one who would bring balance to the Force. We learn of Mortis, a nexus through which all the Force flows and is as much a metaphor as a real place. There, we see Son and Daughter, two Force wielders exhibiting opposite sides of the Force, light and dark. And we have Father, the entity representing balance between his two children, keeping light and dark in check.
These episodes of "The Clone Wars" re-contextualize the prophecy of the Chosen One and the reason for the midi-chlorians to create Anakin Skywalker in the first place, by insisting that to fulfill the prophecy he must stay on Mortis to balance Son and Daughter.
As we look at layers and ripples of the ramifications of Mortis, it feels like Mae and Osha, both conceived in ways similar to Anakin Skywalker, could be connected to that sibling balance of light and dark. Twins have long held a symbolic place in the world of "Star Wars," as have siblings. It seems as though these things further connect Mae and Osha to the story of Anakin Skywalker.
But if he's not the first Force-wielder to have been conceived of the midi-chlorians, Mae and Osha could have interesting and far-reaching consequences for the rest of the "Star Wars" mythos.
Could Osha turn to the dark side?
Where we see these ties between Mae and Anakin Skywalker, it forces one to wonder if they are on a similar path story-wise. Both Osha and Anakin Skywalker, conceived of the Force, wished to become Jedi and were both taken from their families and trained as Jedi at about eight years old. Both wanted to "see the galaxy" and had connections that could interfere with their training. Anakin stayed with the Jedi and Osha left, but as "The Acolyte" showrunner Leslye Headland explores the echoes of Anakin's story from the prequels in interesting ways, could we be seeing the beginnings of Osha's turn to the dark side in order to save her dark sister Mae?
It would be an interesting turn of events and I'd be excited to see the story play out in that way. Regardless, I'm interested in any story Headland wants to tell us, and we've got plenty of episodes left to see what happens.
New episodes of "The Acolyte" hit Disney+ on Tuesdays at 9:00pm ET.
The Emmy winner takes on his first English-language role, working with two two dialect coaches before and during production.
When Lee Jung-jae’s previous show Squid Game became a global phenomenon, Star Wars: The Acolyte creator Leslye Headland was among the many viewers who helped make it Netflix’s most popular non-English speaking series. On top of that, she was also writing The Acolyte’s High Republic Jedi character of Master Sol at the same time as her binge, and that’s when it dawned on the Russian Doll creator that the South Korean actor would be a perfect fit for the honorable Jedi. Sol would then go on to serve as a central figure of Headland’s mystery-thriller series that takes place a century before Star Wars: The Phantom Menace (1999).
However, Lee — whom his collaborators affectionately refer to as “J.J.” — remains rather shocked that his Squid Game character, Seong Gi-hun, inspired Headland to write Sol with him in mind.
“I was actually quite surprised when Leslye [Headland] said that she saw Master Sol from my acting in Squid Game, because I feel like the two characters are so different. So I was very curious about what made her feel that way,” Lee tells The Hollywood Reporter through an interpreter.
On Squid Game, Lee played a struggling father whose gambling addiction was originally meant to create a better life for his daughter, but it instead resulted in insurmountable debt until he rolled the dice once more on participating in the deadly Squid Game. Similarly, Sol has his own paternal instincts with regard to all of the Jedi Padawans and younglings in his care, and despite the best of intentions, he feels partly responsible for the Jedi killing spree that Amandla Stenberg’s Mae embarks on at the start of the Disney+ series. Sol’s mysterious past with Mae and related elements will eventually come into focus, but it’s caused him great anguish since he first encountered 8-year-old Mae 16 years earlier.
Headland later remarked that she most admires Lee’s ability to effortlessly shift from “formidable to heartbreaking,” but Lee himself can only speculate as to what she might have identified at the time of her initial viewing of Squid Game.
“I do feel like both of my characters in Squid Game and The Acolyte embody this kindness and this desire to live in harmony with others and help others. So if I had to think of what she saw in me from Squid Game, then that would be it,” Lee says.
Squid Game also landed Lee an Emmy for outstanding lead actor in a drama series, making him the first Asian man to win the award and the first person to win the honor in a non-English speaking role. For the character of Sol, Lee, who took cues from Liam Neeson’s Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn from The Phantom Menace, tackled what is now his first English-speaking role. Four months ahead of filming, he began tireless dialect preparation in order to perform in English, and he specifically worked with two dialect coaches before and during production. They were so involved in all of the role’s “minute details” that Lee also credits them for the creation of the character.
“I would say that we all kind of crafted this role together,” Lee adds.
Jedi are supposed to be in control of their emotions, but Sol’s regret over his past failings involving Mae indicated that Lee would have another difficult task in balancing Sol’s emotion with the inherent stoicism of a Jedi. “There are a lot of elements of mystery within The Acolyte. So, of course, I didn’t want to show too much emotion through my character, but, at the same time, you don’t want the audience to think, ‘Oh, what is this guy thinking?’ We didn’t want him to be too stoic to where the audience is not able to understand his motives, so that was the most important part in acting as Master Sol,” Lee admits.
Thus, the character’s emotions were meticulously calibrated each and every day with the help of Headland.
“Before every scene, we spoke about the level of his emotion, and we tried to control and adjust that accordingly,” Lee concludes.
***Star Wars: The Acolyte premieres June 4 on Disney+.
Lee Jung-jae as Master Sol in The Acolyte LUCASFILM
SUMMARY
The Acolyte may expand on the reasons why the Jedi Council was concerned about Anakin's age and attachments, as Amandla Stenberg's Mae will likely serve as a key parallel 100 years before The Phantom Menace.
Flashbacks suggest Mae was recruited as an older child, potentially explaining the Jedi's hesitation toward students like Anakin being too old for training.
Mae's story may shed light on why the Jedi avoided older recruits, setting up exciting Jedi Order revelations in The Acolyte's upcoming premiere.
The Acolyte will likely explain the Jedi Council's caution to train Anakin Skywalker in The Phantom Menace. Having been discovered living as a slave on Tatooine with his mother, Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn sensed the boy's great power in the Force as the potential prophesied Chosen One. Regardless, the Jedi Council was hesitant to have the boy trained as he was much older than the typical children they recruited into their ranks.
Now, news promos for the upcoming Acolyte series are teasing that the new series will expand on the reasons why the Jedi were so concerned, 25 years after The Phantom Menace's release. As seen in a new flashback sequence, Jedi Master Sol (Lee Jung-jae) appears to be recruiting Mae (Amandla Stenberg) as a child to become his new Jedi apprentice.
As a result, it seems as though The Acolyte will feature some key parallels to Anakin with this new High Republic Era series set 100 years before the beginning of the Skywalker saga.
The Acolyte Teaser Hints Mae Was An Older Jedi Recruit
She Looks To Be About Anakin's Age
Canonically, children identified by the Jedi Order as Force-sensitive were taken to the Jedi Temple as infants or within the first few years of birth at the latest. As such, it's notable that this flashback seems to depict Mae meeting Master Sol around the same age as Anakin Skywalker when he was found by Qui-Gon. To that end, there's an implication that she too was initiated into the Jedi Order at a much older age than standard.
Likewise, young Mae is also featured being recruited while she's with her coven, the very same group of witches featured in more present-day sequences in The Acolyte's trailers. As such, it can be inferred that Mae is the top suspect behind a recent Jedi killing spree, having recently left the Jedi Order to rejoin the coven she left as a child. To that end, perhaps whatever happened to Mae that caused her to leave Sol and the Jedi Order became a cautionary tale for future Jedi recruitment.
Will Mae's Attachments Explain Why The Jedi Stopped Recruiting Older Students?
Perhaps Mae Is A Big Reason Why The Jedi Believed Anakin Was Too Old
While based only on what's been seen in the trailers and promos, it does look as though Mae's lingering attachments could be what motivated her to leave the Jedi Order. This would be fascinating considering Anakin's age and attachment to his mother were the primary obstacles preventing the Jedi Council from approving his training. At any rate, The Acolyte should prove to be a very exciting examination of the Jedi Order a century before The Phantom Menace, seeing as how this parallel is likely just one of many that will be featured when the full series releases on Disney+.
The Acolyte's two-episode premiere begins streaming June 4th on Disney+.
