Breaking Down the Secrets and Shadows of The Acolyte's First Trailer
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Our first official look at the next Star Wars series, The Acolyte, is here, and with it a real glimpse at a crucial, unexplored period of Star Wars in action. Although the High Republic books and comics have given us a look at the Republic and Jedi at their apex, The Acolyte, set about 100 years after the events of those stories, will begin to look at how they crumble—and how darkness rises in an age of light.
There’s a lot suitably shrouded in mystery in this first trailer, but it also gives us a peek at some key, intriguing characters—and hints at what’s to come in this period of twilight. Let’s take a look, shall we?
Padawan Training
The trailer opens with a Jedi Master teaching a room full of meditating padawans at the Jedi Temple—later shots will show a cityscape that leads us to assume this is the primary Jedi Temple on Coruscant, but a regular aspect of the Jedi Order’s role during the High Republic era so far has been that temples and outposts were in operation across the Republic, and Jedi were much more commonly out in the wider galaxy instead of restricted to its core.
The Jedi Master tells his students: “Close your eyes... your eyes can deceive you. We must not trust them.” Obviously this is a common Jedi training method—after all, Luke first learns his ways to feel through the Force by covering his eyes, switching off targeting computers, and so on, but this also feels like a mission statement for The Acolyte: don’t believe everything you see.
A New World
We then cut to a bustling townlet on an alien world, and a mysterious, purple-robed figure that we’ll see more of soon enough—this is Mae, played by Amandla Stenberg, and a major character in The Acolyte, swept up in a mystery that sees the Jedi’s oldest enemies re-emerge from shadow.
Master Sol
We now see the Jedi Master teaching in padawans is Squid Game’s Lee Jung-jae, and Lucasfilm has confirmed that his character is named Sol—a powerful Jedi Master wracked by emotional conflict.
I See Fire
Sol asks his students what they see through the Force. One says light, the other says balance, but interestingly the third student we hear from offers something darker: they see fire. This padawan is a dark-skinned female humanoid—and we know from previously released descriptions of The Acolyte that Mae and Sol have history together before the events of the show see them cross paths again. Is all this actually a flashback, and this could potentially be Mae before whatever happens to her pushes her away from the Jedi Order?
Master Indara
Another confirmed name is that Matrix legend Carrie-Anne Moss plays Jedi Master Indara, who we see turning from a table at the tavern Mae walks into to face her...
Bringing the Force to a Knife Fight
... and some Star Wars-ian “aggressive negotiations” promptly break out. Indara’s character file describes her as a Jedi of “great physical and mental skill,” which we promptly see here as she weaves and parries through Mae’s knife attacks. A welcome sight until the very end of this trailer is that while we see Jedi engage in combat multiple times, for the most part, they don’t use their lightsabers (you can see Indara’s is still sheathed on her robes’ belt while she fights Mae). It’s a nice little welcome differentiation that their first resort in this enlightened era, even in conflict, is not to immediately break them out.
The Acolyte?
Indara uses the Force to push Mae back, giving us a good look at her gear—chainmail, plate armor, a skirt, and half-mask. It’s very cool, and feels like it’s old, even for Star Wars.
Jedi Knifed
“Someone is killing Jedi,” an unseen man says, as we see, well, Mae presumably killing a Jedi—it’s hard to tell where this is, but it’s very clearly Mae doing the stabbing, and this is presumably why she was going after Indara, too. But why?
Yord and Jecki
The person we heard previously is Charlie Barnett’s Yord, who we get to see here igniting his yellow lightsaber. He’s a Jedi Knight described as “an overachiever and a rule follower,” and his by-the-book attitude regularly clouds his judgment. He’s accompanied in this dark cave by a young alien padawan: Jecki, played by Logan’s Dafne Keen, and the apprentice to Master Sol.
Jecki has been confirmed to be a half-human, half-Theelin, a hybrid alien species first seen in Return of the Jedi—one of Jabba’s dancers added in the Special Edition re-release of the movie, Rystáll Sant, was a human/Theelin hybrid too.
Into the Forest I Go
On another new world, shrouded in mists and forests, a group of Jedi look out across the horizon. We can see Jecki here, as well as Yord and perhaps Sol leading them. Interesting to note on our right is a Kel Dor Jedi. Plo Koon in the prequel trilogy (noted fave of one David Filoni) was the most famous Jedi of his kind that we’ve seen so far, but could this be him? The answer is... we dunno, maybe?
The contemporary Star Wars canon has little to go on for Kel Dor lifespans, but in the EU, some sources Kel Dor lived for on average 65-70 standard years, but others, specifically for Plo Koon’s age, suggested that some Force-sensitive Kel Dor could live much, much longer (Dark Horse’s Clone Wars comics tie in suggested Plo was in fact hundreds of years old!). The Acolyte is set about 100 years before the events of The Phantom Menace, so depending on the source—whatever we have, they’re still non-canonical at the moment!— this could be Plo. A much, much simpler answer is that there is more than one Kel Dor among the thousands and thousands of Jedi in the Order.
Enter Kelnacca
It seems these Jedi are in search of another one of their Order, if this forested background is anything to go by. This is Kelnacca, played by Joonas Suotamo—the actor who inherited Chewbacca from Peter Mayhew in the later Star Wars sequels and Solo—and is described by Lucasfilm as a bit of a loner. Which, even if he is a Wookiee, would make him a prime target for Mae’s murder spree.
Crossed Paths
On another world—perhaps the one we saw her attacking that meditating Jedi on?—we see Mae and Sol cross paths. There’s another cool, non-lightsaber fight here that’s great, but is this the two meeting again after years apart?
Vernestra Rwoh
We briefly saw her in the background of Master Sol’s lesson earlier in the trailer, but this is our first clear look at what is, apparently, the only High Republic novel character making it over to The Acolyte: Vernestra Rwoh, played by Rebecca Henderson. Known to her friends as Vern, in The Acolyte Vernestra is a well-established famous Jedi Master, but when we met her in the earlier High Republic novels, she was a fresh-faced prodigy, one of the youngest ever to become a Jedi Knight at the age of 15.
Qimir
Understandably, there’s a lot of characters in this trailer we’re meeting for the first time! This is Qimir, played by Good Place’s Manny Jacinto—apparently a former smuggler who now lives a life of leisure as a trader of oddities.
Mission Robes
Throughout this trailer we see Jedi in two different kinds of robes. Light cream and gold robes, and these more stereotypically Jedi brown ones with muted earth tones. In the High Republic era, there’s a distinct purpose to the two: the light robes are more ceremonial Temple attire, intended to be worn when Jedi are either participating in events or are stationed at a Jedi Temple or outpost. These darker robes are Mission robes, for when they’re in the field.
Interesting to note here are the Jedi we see—Indara, Kelnacca, and what certainly looks like it could be Lee Jung-jae as a younger Sol between them, with a shorter hair cut. If this is indeed Sol, when is this scene taking place? And as for who they’re talking to...
Many Paths, Open Hands
The Jedi are talking to Mother Aniseya, played by Jodie Turner-Smith, described as the leader of an independent “coven of witches” that places high value on the preservation of their practices and beliefs. While she’s an entirely new character, all her face markings, her gesturing, and her “Mother” title may have some High Republic fans’ minds afire: it certainly sounds a lot like the Path of the Open Hand.
Introduced as a major faction in the second phase of High Republic stories—themselves set a further 150 years prior to the main period, so 250 years before The Acolyte—the Path of the Open Hand was a Force religion that vehemently disavowed against actually using the Force, considering any manipulation of it to be tantamount to abuse. The Path were the primary antagonists of the High Republic’s second phase, manipulating the Jedi Order and various other Force religions into conflict while also discovering the mysterious creatures known as the Nameless—monsters that could prey on Force-sensitive beings and turn them into ash and stone, sucking their life force out.
Over the course of the second phase, the Path splintered into various factions before practically dissolving entirely after a battle with the Jedi known as the Night of Sorrow—with one faction of survivors forming a new organization, the Elders of the Path, while another laid the foundation for what would eventually become the piratical group called the Nihil, the main antagonists of the High Republic’s first and third phases. So even if this coven has connections to the Path, they’re probably not actually the Path itself at this point. But they could be an offshoot of its teachings.
Crash Landing
On a frost covered world, we see Master Sol and a group of Jedi watch a starship make a violent landing. It’s not immediately obvious whose ship this is—it doesn’t match Republic or Jedi vessels that we’ve seen in High Republic media so far yet—but Vernestra Rwoh is rather infamous for regularly crashing vehicles she pilots, so it would be incredibly funny if this is, for one reason or another, her making a splashy entrance for all the wrong reasons.
Power, and Who Gets to Use It
Just who Mother Aniseya is talking to here is unknown—the trailer tries to cut it like she’s addressing Mae, but it’s unclear. But what she says is another key thesis for The Acolyte: “This isn’t about good or bad. This is about power, and who is allowed to use it.” We’ve known from Stenberg’s previous comments about the series that the show wants to navigate a much less clear delineation between the intent of the Light and Dark Sides of the Force, with the Jedi Order less clear cut as the “Good” protagonists we’re used to them being portrayed as.
If the Jedi Order represents a monopoly on Force theology at this point in their reach across the galaxy, it’s unsurprising there would be groups of other religions connected to the Force that see that as the system trying to control them, and what’s accepted—and just as unsurprising that others would not exactly see them as good for it. The idea of power imbalance and control of the Force similarly goes back to what the Path of the Open Hand despised about the Jedi, lending a little more credence to the idea that Aniseya is connected to them.
The Dawn of the Jedi?
We get to see Mae confront a robed figure—it’s possible that it’s the short-haired Jedi who may or may not be Sol—on an ocean-covered planet. The environment they’re in looks a lot like it could quite possibly be Ahch-To, the site of the first Jedi Temple and the home of Luke Skywalker in exile during the events of The Last Jedi. We know very little about Ahch-To’s place in the Order by the time of the High Republic, but whether or not this is indeed that world (all we really know is that the planet’s location as the original site of the first Jedi Temple was lost to common knowledge by the time of the Skywalker Saga), this seems like a very important location.
A Light in the Dark
The trailer concludes with a very exciting moment—a group of Jedi, including Sol, Yord, and Jecki, find themselves in a dark jungle, only to be confronted by a shocking sight: a crimson lightsaber spinning through the air, before it returns to a robed user’s hand. Of course we have seen red lightsabers aplenty, but it’s important to remember that this is a horrifically alien sight to the Jedi of this time period.
As for who’s wielding it, it’s hard to say. Could it be Mae? Is this her becoming further pushed down the path of the Dark Side? Is this why she’s murdering Jedi, acquiring kyber crystals to bleed?
Fall of the Jedi
If it is Mae, she’s come a long way from knife fights and spinning kicks, as we see the Jedi ignite their sabers ready for combat only to be bowled clean over by a massive Force push from whoever the mysterious red saber wielder is. What was that about power and who controls it again?
There’s a lot going on here in this first look at The Acolyte, even if it is regularly shrouded in mystery. We don’t know enough about this period of Star Wars or these characters yet to really know what’s going on—and that’s arguably a very good thing, considering how much Star Wars usually plays with familiarity in the form of characters and places and stories we know over and over. Time will tell just how much weight there is behind that promise though, as we draw closer and closer to The Acolyte’s debut on Disney+ on June 4.
