Lucasfilm Star Admits He’s Been Lying to 'Star Wars' Fans for Years, Relieved To Stop

Manny Jacinto, the breakout star of the new Lucasfilm Star Wars series The Acolyte, has been lying to fans (and everyone) for years now, and he’s glad to be able to stop.

A person with wet hair and a mustache looks intently at the camera in a dimly lit setting. Their expression is serious, and their face glistens with moisture, suggesting a tense or dramatic scene. — Credit: Lucasfilm

The Acolyte is the latest live-action Star Wars series to land on Disney+ and, arguably, its most controversial to date. While The Mandalorian kicked things off with a bang when the streaming service launched in 2019, it has been running out of steam as star Pedro Pascal increasingly commits to other projects like the HBO series The Last of Us and the upcoming Marvel reboot The Fantastic Four.

A feature film starring Din Djarin (Pascal) and his adoptive son Grogu is in the works, but it will still be years before it hits theaters.

That has left a pretty massive hole in the Star Wars universe, and Lucasfilm has been scrambling to try to find something that will draw in fans in the same way. Shows like Obi-Wan Kenobi and Ahsoka have both tried to tempt audiences with legacy characters and Dave Filoni Clone Wars deep cuts, while animated series like Tales of the Jedi and Young Jedi Adventures mostly fly under the radar for non-hardcore fans.

An animated scene from Young Jedi Adventures depicts three young characters wielding lightsabers and a floating droid. One character holds a green lightsaber in a defensive stance, another wields a blue lightsaber, and the third, lying on the ground, holds a purple lightsaber as the droid fires blue lasers. — Credit: Disney Channel

The Acolyte, the new series from creator Leslye Headland, has landed squarely in the middle of this turbulent time for Star Wars. If it is not doing as strong of viewing numbers as the aforementioned live-action shows, it is at least causing cultural conversation.

As the first Star Wars show helmed by a woman, The Acolyte was already expected to provoke some outrage from the more toxic parts of franchise fandom.

Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy ruffled some feathers just for pointing this out and openly discussing the “male-dominated” fanbase’s typical reactions to female and POC protagonists, and she has essentially been proven correct by the massive disparity between critics and audience scores at Rotten Tomatoes. Review bombing is alive and well in a galaxy far, far away.

An individual with long dark hair and a mustache peeks around a corner in a weathered, industrial-looking setting. The person appears cautious or curious, looking towards a nearby control panel on the wall. The scene has a gritty, dystopian feel. — Credit: Lucasfilm

Notably, Manny Jacinto (previously best known for his roles on The Good Place and Nine Perfect Strangers) has largely emerged unscathed from the various Acolyte controversies, which involve everything from the birth date of Jedi Master Ki-Adi-Mundi to the role of Anakin Skywalker within Force-based immaculate conceptions to the use of lightsabers in hairstyling.

It is even more notable that Manny Jacinto has emerged as a fan-favorite, considering that even he admits that he had to directly deceive the Star Wars audience (and his own friends) for the last two years that The Acolyte has been in production.

The fifth episode of the series (“Night”) revealed that Jacinto’s character Qimir, previously depicted as an amoral but minor figure, was actually the Stranger, the Dark Force-using mastermind behind Mae’s (Amandla Stenberg) training and Jedi-murder plans.

In an extensive feature in Entertainment Weekly, Manny Jacinto described the pressure of lying to Star Wars fans, saying, “I’ve been lying to people for the last two years — to their faces. Some of them, they straight up call me out and they’re like, ‘I don’t trust what you’re saying.’ Some of them believe me. But I’ve been lying, and it gives me a lot of anxiety, having to lie to people.”

A dark, armored figure with a sinister, alien-like helmet, partially concealed in shadows, stands against a backdrop of swirling shades of blue. The helmet features a glossy finish with sharp, menacing edges, lending a mysterious and ominous aura to the character. — Credit: Lucasfilm

Jacinto continued, describing the deceptive nature of the Stranger/Qimir: “We talked a lot about how you take a low-status character and convert him to a badass. He’s a guy that is so under the radar that nobody is paying attention to, and all of a sudden, he’s actually the guy pulling the strings.”

It sounds as though one of the most difficult parts of pulling off the deception was the sheer amount of physical training that could not disclosed. He said:

“I had almost four months to train for that flight scene. This was the first time I really got to dig into something with so much action and really make use of my dance background. We worked on everything. We did boxing, we worked on kicks, we worked on all the choreography. It was tough. They conditioned my body so that I could get through this five-person fight scene.”

Three Jedi in robes stand ready, wielding never-before-seen Disney Star Wars lightsabers emitting green, yellow, and blue light in a dimly lit setting. The background features lush foliage and a rocky wall, suggesting a forest or cave environment. The scene is intense and full of vivid colors. star wars lightsaber the acolyte whip saber — Credit: Disney

Now that Manny Jacinto has been revealed as a maybe-Sith and an antagonist to the Jedi, it may be that all the lies are over. But, then again, maybe he has more secrets yet to expose.

The Acolyte stars Amandla Stenberg, Lee Jung-jae, Dafne Keen, Manny Jacinto, Charlie Barnett, Jodie Turner-Smith, Rebecca Henderson, Dean-Charles Chapman, Joonas Suotamo, and Carrie-Anne Moss star. New episodes stream on Disney+ on Tuesdays 6 p.m. PT/9 p.m. ET.

What’s your favorite episode of The Acolyte so far? Tell us what you think of the Qimir reveal!