By The fifth episode of the “Star Wars” series “The Acolyte” seemed to mark a turning point for the show. After some contentious and slow early episodes, that episode was essentially a non-stop action piece with some key reveals and board setting for the remainder of the season.
SPOILERS AHEAD FOR EPISODE 5
Though some questions have been resolved, namely, who is the masked Dark Side of the Force-using character now officially monikered ‘The Stranger’, other questions still linger.
The big ones relate to what the four original Jedis, the ones who are being murdered, actually did that has them so ashamed and put targets on their backs.
We also need to know what happened on Mae and Osha’s home planet fortress when it was burned and destroyed. So far, we’ve only seen Osha’s perspective, limited by her being locked in a room while whatever happened took place outside.
Those mysteries are likely to be resolved in the remaining three episodes, but showrunner Leslye Headland indicates much of the mystery surrounding The Stranger and his motives won’t be made clear – instead, she tells EW, they’re holding those back for a potential second season:
He wants [the] freedom to be able to be who he is and wield his power the way he wants to, but he also wants freedom on a second level that I think we’ll get more into if we get a season two.
But once we knew he was going to kill Jecki and Yord, then it became about: How are you going to execute this in a way that feels satisfying and believable once it does happen?
Because it’s Osha’s story, you don’t know much about the Stranger’s background, and you’re not really going to learn much about it. But there are a bunch of things in episode six and episode eight that are really big clues as to why he is the way he is and why his philosophy is the way that it is.”
Pressed further about how she approached the series, she says they deliberately designed this not to be closed off like some other “Star Wars” shows:
“You don’t want to leave it so wrapped up that, like ‘Obi-Wan’ or a standalone mini-series, that there’s no reason to watch a second season, but I think there’s enough stuff in the last few episodes that you would want to have answered.”
As The Playlist has pointed out, it seems Headland may have given up the game on what the second season reveal might be as part of a Star Wars Conversations video with Dave Filoni up on YouTube. In that video, she says:
“What I was interested in was The Sith. [In] the Master/apprentice dynamic, if the Apprentice is craving his Master’s power, then at some point, he must recruit his own Apprentice to overthrow the Master. And that is the Acolyte.”
In other words, The Stranger/Qimir is the Apprentice and his master is someone whom we won’t see until next season.
So far, the series has carefully not locked Qimir into being a Sith. The only on-screen mention is one of the character’s lines that the Jedi “might call me Sith” but doesn’t actually declare himself one.
Three more episodes remain to air in the first season of “The Acolyte.” No renewal order has been handed out yet.
The post “Acolyte” Holds Back Key Reveal To S2 appeared first on Dark Horizons.
