Star Wars: The Acolyte: everything we know about the Disney Plus show

The Acolyte

is unlike any of the

other

new

Star Wars

TV shows and movies heading to Disney Plus.

Set during The High Republic era – around a century before the

events

of

The Phantom Menace

and, later, the Skywalker Saga


– it’ll show the Jedi Order at the height of its powers. It’ll also put followers of the Dark Side of the Force front and center of its story, paving the way for Emperor Palpatine’s power grab in the prequel trilogy.

We know the Disney Plus series, which is being helmed by

Russian Doll

‘s Leslye Headland, will have a greater focus on its female characters than any previous trip to George Lucas’s famous galaxy far, far away, too. In short: expect the unexpected when this

Star Wars

show drops sometime next year.

With

The Acolyte

one of three Star Wars projects taking flight in 2024, then, we’ve rounded up everything you need to know about this hotly anticipated TV show. That includes confirmed cast and plot details, speculation on its release date, and more.

Mild spoilers follow

for some aspects of

Star Wars: The Acolyte

, as well as details on the High Republic era from

Star Wars

‘ extensive literary works.

Lucasfilm hasn’t set its targeting computer to anything more specific than a vague 2024 release window, which was announced during Star Wars Celebration 2023 in London, for

The Acolyte

.

Filming – most of which took place in the UK – wrapped on June 6, a whole month before the now-resolved actors strike so, as long as its post-production phase doesn’t overrun, the eight-episode series is still on course to land next year.

Even so,

when

is the million-dollar question.

Skeleton Crew

(which wrapped in January 2023) and

Andor

season 2 are also primed to make the hyperspace jump onto one of the world’s best streaming services in 2024, too. The latter of those is in the final throes of full production, with some scenes yet to be shot. If

Andor

‘s next outing ends up being

Star Wars

‘ late 2024 offering because of its production schedule,

The Acolyte

and

Skeleton Crew

‘s releases will depend on which one is ready to go first.

Our guess?

The Acolyte

, based on the fact we know more about it, is likely to be the first of those three series to launch, meaning we could see it sometime in early 2024.

Many of

The Acolyte

‘s cast have already been confirmed, though most of their characters are shielded behind a forcefield of secrecy:

• Amandla Stenberg as TBC
• Lee Jung-jae as TBC
• Manny Jacinto as TBC
• Dafne Keen as TBC
• Jodie Turner-Smith as TBC
• Carrie-Anne Moss as TBC
• Rebecca Henderson as Vernestra Rwoh
• 
  Charlie
  
  Barnett as TBC
• Dean-Charles Chapman as TBC
• Margarita Levieva as TBC
• Joonas Suotamo as Kelnacca

Of the above contingent, Stenberg (

Bodies Bodies Bodies

) was one of the first to be announced. Indeed,

Star Wars: The Acolyte

found one of its lead stars in December 2021, before the Disney Plus show got a major cast update in November 2022, with the likes of Moss, Jung-jae, Keen, and Turner-Smith added to its ranks.

The two characters who don’t have ‘TBC’ next to their name are both Jedi. Per

Entertainment Weekly

(EW), Kelnacca is a Wookiee Force-wielder, and will be portrayed by Joonas Suotamo, best known for playing Chewbacca in the

Star Wars

sequel trilogy and

Solo: A Star Wars Story

. Meanwhile, Vernestra Rwoh is a green-skinned Mirialan Jedi who’s become something of a fan favorite in existing High Republic stories. This older version of the character will be played by

Russian Doll

‘s Rebecca Henderson, as confirmed by

Collider

.

Other cast members’ characters remain nameless, but we know some details about them. Stenberg plays a former Padawan apprentice, while Jung-jae (

Squid Game

) is her former Jedi Master. Star Wars Stuff posted a leaked set photo of Lee’s character on X (formerly known as Twitter), which you can view below:

Elsewhere, Empire magazine (thanks to

Star Wars Leaks

for the assist) confirmed Charlie Barnett (

Chicago Fire

), Dafne Keen (

His Dark Materials

), and Dean-Charles Chapman (

Game of Thrones

) will also be playing Jedi. Here’s Chapman on set (again, per Star Wars Stuff):

According to the same Empire article linked above, Keen’s Force-sensitive character is human-Theelin hybrid, much like Rystáll Sant, a red-haired backing singer for Jabba’s house band in

Return of the Jedi

. Keen told Empire her character is “David Bowie meets

Star Wars

: I have a little mullet, I have horns, it’s cute.”

Turner-Smith’s (

Queen & Slim

) character does “use the Force, but I’m not a Jedi or Sith”. Moss (

The Matrix

) will also play a Force wielder of some description, though her allegiance is not yet clear.

In the finest tradition of Han Solo, not every member of

The Acolyte

cast will be showing off their skills with the Force or a lightsaber. Manny Jacinto (

Nine Perfect Strangers

) told

Empire magazine

his character is “just a regular guy, trying to have a good time, who gets swept up into the High Republic world and the Jedi, whether he likes it or not.”

Beyond the main cast, UK newspaper

The Metro

claimed Moss’

Matrix

co-star Keanu Reeves might cameo.


And don’t be surprised if Yoda – who’s 900 years old by the time of his death in

Return of the Jedi

, and therefore alive and kicking in the High Republic era – makes an appearance. Palpatine’s Muun Sith Master, Darth Plagueis, may also be at large.

There’s plenty to suggest the show is in excellent hands behind the camera, too. As well as having co-created one of the best Netflix shows ever in

Russian Doll

, Headland is a lifelong

Star Wars

aficionado.

“She is a gigantic

Star Wars

fan,” Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy told

Vanity Fair

. “What’s wonderful about Leslye is she knows it all. I mean, she’s read a gazillion books inside the EU [Expanded Universe]. There are little bits and pieces that she’s drawing from that no one has explored yet in the onscreen storytelling.”

Joining Headland in the stacked and talented writers room are (per

Knight Edge Media

) are Jason Micallef (

Heathers

), Charmaine DeGrate and Eileen Shim (

House of the Dragon

),


Jasmyne Flournoy (

Falcon and the Winter Solider

), Claire Kiechel (

Watchmen

), Kor Adana (

Mr. Robot

), Cameron Squires (

WandaVision

), Jocelyn Bioh (

Tiny Beautiful Things

), and Jen Richards (

Her Story

).

Tired of the Skywalker family’s disproportionate influence on that galaxy far, far away?

The Acolyte

could be the show for you. Kicking off nearly 100 years before Anakin was even born, the new show is set in the High Republic era, a time period the veteran franchise has – unless you count non-canon kids’ show

Young Jedi Adventures

– never previously explored on screen.

Per

StarWars.com

,

The Acolyte

is a “mystery-thriller” set in “a galaxy of shadowy secrets and emerging dark side powers in the final days of the High Republic era. A former Padawan reunites with her Jedi Master to investigate a series of crimes, but the forces they confront are more sinister than they ever anticipated.”

“It’s set 100 years before the prequel movies, and it’s kind of an explanation of how the Sith infiltrated the Jedi,” Keen exclusively told TechRadar, too. “It’s a Sith-led story, which has never been done before.”

While

The Acolyte

marks its live-action debut, the High Republic is already a big deal in wider

Star Wars

canon. Since Charles Soule’s novel

The Light of the Jedi

was published in January 2021, this Lucasfilm multimedia initiative has told numerous tales – across books, comics, short stories, and an audio drama – set during a period stretching from around 500 years to 100 years before the events of the original

Star Wars

trilogy.

“

The Acolyte

stands out because it is the earliest in the

Star Wars

timeline that we have ever been in live-action,” showrunner Leslye Headland told

EW’s Dagobah Dispatch podcast

. “We are toward the end of the High Republic, leading into George [Lucas]’s prequels, so we are looking at a time period where the Jedi are at the height of their power.

“We’re looking at a time period where there is peace throughout the galaxy. It was very challenging and interesting to make a

Star Wars

with no war in it. So the question became ‘Well, what should the show be about if it’s not going to be about galactic conflict?’”

The former Padawan and Jedi Master mentioned in StarWars.com’s summary are almost definitely the as-yet unnamed characters played by Stenberg and Jung-jae. But it’s those references to “shadowy secrets”, “emerging dark side powers”, and sinister forces that are likely to be more important to the overall Star Wars timeline. (If you want to see how everything fits together, check out our handy how to

watch

Star Wars in order guide).

It turns out that, in the glory days of the High Republic, the Jedi’s eternal rivals – the Sith – have effectively passed into myth, much like the Jedi did in the original film trilogy. However, if Star Wars has taught us anything, it’s that the Dark Side never truly goes away.

The Acolyte

, then, will effectively sow the seeds for fall of the Republic in the prequel movies, when Jedi complacency allows Darth Sidious/Emperor Palpatine to rise to power right under Yoda and Mace Windu’s noses.

“The High Republic is so golden in so many ways,” Headland pointed out to

Vanity Fair

. “The Jedi uniforms are gold and white and it’s almost like they would never get dirty. The idea is that they could have these types of uniforms because that’s how little they’re getting into skirmishes. So, of course, my question is like, ‘Well, what else is going on?’ You can’t just end up with George [Lucas]’

Phantom Menace

situation if everything is going well.

“It has to be going well at the expense of what? What is not being attended to? What are we turning a blind eye to that could lead to the rise of somebody like Palpatine about a century later? Yes, it’s one bad guy, but it’s one bad guy that completely undermines the entire system of government. A lot of other things must have been going on beneath the surface.”

In arguably the show’s most radical departure from traditional

Star Wars

, the so-called good guys won’t necessarily be the protagonists of

The Acolyte

plot – indeed, in franchise lore, the term ‘acolyte’ has traditionally referred to followers of the Sith religion.

“I think that what makes this show different and interesting is that it’s from the perspective of the villains of

Star Wars

,” Headland told the Dagobah Dispatch podcast. “These are people who are using the Force in their own way, dipping into the darker sides of the Force and are doing it without being sanctioned by the larger institution, which, in this case, is the Jedi.”

There are also parallels with

The Mandalorian

season 4, where traditional bad guys the Empire are – like the Dark Siders in

The Acolyte

– the plucky outsiders battling against the establishment.

“

Star Wars

is always about some version of the underdog versus the institution,” said Headland. “And I just thought it was very interesting to do a show about the bad guys and to set that during that time period made the most sense. So it’s kind of almost flipped. We have more Jedi than you’ve seen in any of the of the

Star Wars

content, but at the same time, you see more morally ambiguous characters than you’ve seen in other

Star Wars

content.”

Despite all that darkness, the world of

The Acolyte

– a lot of which, it seems, will take place on city planet Coruscant – will look prettier and shinier than

Star Wars

ever has before.

“I love the fact that George Lucas, when he originally made

Episodes IV

through

VI

[

A New Hope

to

Return of the Jedi

], you can see that he wants everything to feel like it has this particular type of decay,” Headland told Vanity Fair. “This is a lived-in sci-fi/fantasy world, not a sleek, well-put-together aesthetic.

“[But] when he tasked himself with making the prequels, the way that he decided to address technology and all of those types of things was to make it a much sleeker, better-looking, almost more advanced time. That’s what’s kind of weird about

Star Wars

. The further you go back, the better things are. ‘A long time ago’ actually becomes more futuristic. So while we are creating this type of world, we’re trying to carry George’s concept that the further you go back, the more exciting and new and sleek and interesting things look.”

But one big question remains: how do these dark Jedi and the future fall of the Republic fit in with Headland’s unlikely – if headline-friendly – original “

Frozen

meets

Kill Bill

” elevator pitch for

The Acolyte

story? The Tarantino reference refers to the martial arts influences on the film, everything from Akira Kurosawa samurai movies to Shaw Brothers’ Hong Kong actioners to

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

.

As for the popular cartoon musical

Frozen

, aka one of our best Disney Plus movies, that’s a nod to a story that – like

Star Wars: Ahsoka

earlier this year – is dominated by its female characters.

“So much of

Frozen

was about the sister relationship,” Headland told

IGN

. “So much of it was about the villain actually being a powerful, misunderstood woman. I couldn’t believe that it was a cartoon with music. It was hitting me on such a deep level and yet servicing the genre so well.”

In so many ways,

The Acolyte

promises to be

Star Wars

as we’ve never seen it before.

No, a trailer for

The Acolyte

hasn’t been released yet. Only the lucky few who attended

Star Wars

Celebration 2023 have seen some footage, but – assuming Lucasfilm follow usual protocols – we’d expect the first teaser to arrive a few months ahead of the Disney Plus show’s debut.

Per

Variety

, the Celebration footage featured a gold lightsaber, many Jedi igniting their Kyber crystal-based blades in unison, and a fight between Moss and Stenberg’s masked character “that recalled the former’s

The Matrix

performance.”

GamesRadar

added the teaser opened with Jung-jae’s character telling Padawan learners “the Force is powerful, it is power, we must respect [it]”. They also reported a seemingly pivotal line spoken by Turner-Smith’s character saying “this isn’t about good or bad. This is about power and who is allowed to use it”.

Once an official teaser makes its way onto YouTube and

Star Wars

‘ social channels, we’ll update this section.

Given it’s set during the High Republic era, there are no

Star Wars

movies or TV shows you need to watch before

The Acolyte

launches, which will come as a relief to viewers who don’t want lots of homework to do.

Still, if you want some Lucasfilm-developed TV series to stream – some of them are among the best Disney Plus shows – in the interim, check out one or more of the options below:

• 
  
  The Mandalorian
  
  
  – set between
  
  Star Wars Episode VI
  
  and
  
  Episode VII
  
  , this space western sees Pedro Pascal’s lone gunslinger becomes a surrogate father to ‘baby Yoda’, a child of the legendary Jedi’s alien race, who is apparently vital importance to a Machiavellian scheme concocted by the Galactic Empire’s remnants. All three seasons are available on Disney’s primary streamer now.
• 
  
  Star Wars: Ahsoka
  
  
  – running alongside
  
  The Mandalorian
  
  , this live-action sequel to
  
  Star Wars: Rebels
  
  sees the fan-favorite Togruta Force wielder reunite with her
  
  Rebels
  
  allies to try and thwart a menacing Empire general’s return. Stream season 1 and then read our
  
  Star Wars: Ahsoka
  
  ending explainer to see how it impacts the future of
  
  Star Wars
  
  .
• 
  
  The Book of Boba Fett
  
  
  – the weakest of Lucasfilms’ live-action shows, Boba Fett’s standalone show sees the iconic bounty hunter navigate the galaxy’s seedy underworld as he attempts to replace Jabba the Hutt as Tattooine’s number one crime lord. All seven episodes are available on Disney Plus.