Credit: Inside the MagicStar Wars: The Acolyte is not streaming on Disney+ until June, but fans already have some very strong opinions about it. We’ll have to wait a few months to see whether the show rises to the critical acclaim of Andor or whether it goes down in flames like The Book of Boba Fett, but either way, showrunner Leslye Headland is already planning on season 2 of the show.
The Acolyte is one of the bigger swings that Disney and Lucasfilm are taking with the Star Wars franchise. While The Mandalorian originally began as being almost completely distinct from the Jedi-filled galaxy of the Skywalker Saga, it has slowly become a morass of Clone War references, special guest appearances, and backdoor pilots for Dave Filoni characters. But Kathleen Kennedy seems to be aware that this is only so much water that can be taken from the Skywalker well, and the trailer for The Acolyte shows great promise to mix things up a bit.
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The new series takes place a century before The Phantom Menace (1999), in what is canonically referred to as the High Republic Era; that basically means that the Sith appear to be extinct, the Galactic Republic has significant enemies, and things seem to be pretty chill for the Jedi. That is, until Jedi Master Sol (Lee Jung-jae) begins investigating a series of crimes that lead to a former Padawan (Amandla Stenberg) and, according to the trailer, leads even further to a whole bunch of lightsaber fights.
Except for that, we don’t know a whole lot about what The Acolyte will involve. It seems that Leslye Headland already has plans for the future of the show, so hopefully, the show manages to charm the rabid hordes of Star Wars fans out there. In a recent Collider interview, Headland revealed that The Acolyte was “definitely pitched it as a multi-season show. There are a lot of things at the end of this season that I think are narrative threads that are not tied up, for sure…We definitely have a timeline. I have a lot of ideas, and again, a lot of it was stuff that I told Kathleen early on, in terms of where I would like the season to go, and the conflicts that I see happening, specifically in the second season.”
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It seems that there is plenty of story to keep going with this new Star Wars show, though Leslye Headland continued, “I have been working nonstop on this for a very long time, so I am definitely taking a much needed break before we get the writer room going. And I’d like to see how the show performs. I’m very interested in that. I’m interested in seeing, like you said, the ratings and seeing what are the things that people…I don’t wanna say it’s in reaction to fan reaction, but you do get feedback at the end of the season, which is kind of nice, to just be like, “ok, those people hated that.” It doesn’t mean we don’t do it, it just means we’re armed with the information that that was an unpopular thing.
It’s clear that The Acolyte could keep going for a while, but we’ll need to give Headland a break first.
Are you looking forward to The Acolyte? Let’s hear your thoughts in the comments below!