Freakier Friday’s Manny Jacinto “Would Love” to Return as His Star Wars Villain

Manny Jacinto is no stranger to franchises, but one got away. The Freakier Friday star is best known for his role as drug-dealing DJ Jason Mendoza on The Good Place, which Jacinto followed with a turn in the blockbuster Top Gun: Maverick before donning the grinning mask and helmet of the Stranger on Star Wars: The Acolyte. A Sith Lord in the High Republic Era, Jacinto’s Stranger took an apprentice in Amandla Stenberg’s Osha Aniseya, a former Jedi Padawan who murdered Master Sol (Lee Jung-jae) before turning to the dark side and taking her place as the Sith’s acolyte.

Although the Star Wars series ended on a cliffhanger and set up a season 2, Lucasfilm cancelled the Disney+ series last August. Set 100 years before the events of Episode I: The Phantom Menace, creator Leslye Headland’s show had more planned for Osha and the Stranger — plans that were scuttled when Disney announced the series would not be renewed.

“I would love to,” Jacinto told ComicBook in an interview pegged to Freakier Friday when asked about potentially popping up elsewhere in the Star Wars galaxy. “I would love to run it back. I love that character, that franchise, that team.”

“We’ll put it out there,” he continued. “Star Wars is a big universe, galaxy, what have you. But if the fans want it, I’m down and ready to go.”

Last year, Jacinto revealed Headland had planned “for us to do three seasons, not just this one.”

“There’s something about having a finite ending to things that makes it so much more special,” the actor said at Fan Expo months after the cancellation. “So, yeah, I don’t know if I’d do it or not, but you know, three seasons and a movie would have been incredible, and I know we had so much more to explore with that second season.”

That same month, Disney Entertainment co-chairman Alan Bergman explained the decision to cancel The Acolyte, telling Vulture the show’s ratings weren’t “where we needed it to be given the cost structure of that title, quite frankly, to go and make a season 2.”

Disney has since released a prequel novel, The Acolyte: The Crystal Crown, centered on Dafne Keen’s Jecki Lon and Charlie Barnett’s Yord Fandar, and a Marvel one-shot comic about the Wookiee Jedi Kelnacca.

Freakier Friday, staring Jamie Lee Curtis, Lindsay Lohan, Julia Butters, Sophia Hammons, Manny Jacinto, Maitreyi Ramakrishnan, Mark Harmon, and Chad Michael Murray, opens in theaters August 8.