Will The Acolyte Become Disney's Most Brutal Star Wars Show Yet?

Summary

• This June, a new Star Wars series, The Acolyte, will debut on Disney+.
• It's the first TV series to take place before Lucas' films.
• Based on this and other assumptions, we can assume that many tragic and brutal moments in the series are simply inevitable.

George Lucas has always made the idea of family, whether born or found, the ability to accept and let go, as well as the ability to be mindful and find joy in it, the core of his stories. But Star Wars is by no means a light-hearted fable, it is a sinister universe where death lurks around every corner. The endless rise of oppressive states over the millennia, war crimes and the extermination of planets, criminal empires, drug and human trafficking — well, the original trilogy, for all its 'family-friendly' charm, already showed some horrors.

In the case of the prequels, Lucas was even more blatant, placing not local sabotage rebels at the center of the plot, but a full-scale galactic war with countless civilian and military casualties, and ending with one of the main tragedies of the entire franchise — the cynical Order 66. And while the numerous series that followed have developed these motifs extensively, most notably The Clone Wars, it seems that no series (perhaps with the exception of Andor ) has managed to show the truly dark side of A Galaxy Far, Far Away.

But it looks like this is about to change with the release of the new The Acolyte.

The Long-Awaited Prequel Series

This highly anticipated series will be a prequel set one hundred years before The Phantom Menace, during the so-called High Republic, a multimedia Star Wars sub-franchise developed by Lucasfilm and Disney as a replacement for the popular Old Republic setting (well, maybe SOMEDAY we will get the remakes of the iconic video games at last, even though it is not considered as 'canon' anymore).

The Acolyte will be the first live-action series set in the High Republic era and will tell the story of a former Padawan (Amandla Stenberg) who reunites with her former Jedi Master (Lee Jung-jae) to investigate mysterious crimes that conceal the plots of the Dark Side.

In addition to Stenberg and Lee, the series will star Manny Jacinto, Dafne Keen, Jodie Turner-Smith, Charlie Barnett, Carrie-Anne Moss and other well-known actors and celebrities. The series was created by Leslye Headland (Sleeping with Other People, Russian Doll), with cinematography by James Friend, known for his harrowing visual style on Netflix 's All Quiet on the Western Front. In other words, we're in for a series on the scale of The Mandalorian and Andor, rather than on the level of the failed The Book of Boba Fett (or even Kenobi; sorry, folks).

Why the Acolyte Might Be One of the Most Brutal Star Wars Stories Ever Told

First, it should be noted that while the Sith were already considered legends in the times of the High Republic, and thus we are unlikely to see full-fledged masters of the Dark Side directly, the Jedi were already actively involved in the political activities of the Republic, acting as enforcers. At the very least, this could be a major motif in the slow but sure corruption of the Jedi Order.

Second, the series takes place a hundred years before Phantom Menace. Other High Republic media take place some 500-200 years earlier, when the Republic was at its political, cultural, and economic peak, but by the time of The Acolyte, we will be witnessing a transitional period, with some very dark and powerful forces lurking in its shadows. Also, given how often Lucas has killed Jedi in the prequels, it's probably safe to assume that many will die in The Acolyte at the hands of those dark and powerful forces.

The Acolyte is scheduled to debut on June 4, 2024 and, like other Star Wars shows, will premiere exclusively on Disney+. Initially, the first two of eight episodes will be released, with the remaining six episodes released weekly.