The new TV series Star Wars: The Acolyte marks the first time the galaxy far, far away has brought to life the era of The High Republic in live-action, as it takes place more than a century before Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. Even though there’s a lot of narrative distance between the series and the rest of the franchise, series creator Leslye Headland found a way to slip an iconic line into the series, as Charlie Barnett’s Yord Fandar expresses at one point, “I have a bad feeling about this.” Headland admitted that external forces nearly kept her from including it, though the Star Wars fan in her knew she had to make it happen.
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“That was hard to get that in,” Headland revealed to Entertainment Weekly. “I’m going to be honest. I got a lot of feedback that I shouldn’t put that in. But I just feel like when you get the opportunity to do Star Wars, you’re just going to shoot your shot. And ‘I have a bad feeling about this’ is incredibly iconic.”
She continued, “It’s such an iconic line that I think there was some concern of, ‘Well, we don’t want to just drop it in there and have everyone go, ‘Oh, I see.’ But I think we found a good way to justify it and make it feel natural and still be an homage.”
The quote goes back to Star Wars: A New Hope, with Luke Skywalker first saying, “I have a very bad feeling about this,” when the Millenium Falcon approached the Death Star, and was then repeated by Han Solo as the Death Star’s trash compactor began to close, as he expressed, “I got a bad feeling about this.” A variation of this line has appeared in all live-action Star Wars movies, including Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, though in Solo: A Star Wars Story, the line is flipped so that Han confesses, “I have a really good feeling about this!” The line has also popped up in TV shows, books, comics, video games, and more corners of the franchise.
In addition to Headland having some trepidation about including the line, Barnett was a bit worried about the dialogue as well, as he joked to the outlet, “I had a bad feeling about saying that ‘bad feeling’ line.”
New episodes of Star Wars: The Acolyte premiere on Tuesdays on Disney+.
What did you think of the line in the series? Contact Patrick Cavanaugh directly on Twitter or on Instagram to talk all things Star Wars and horror!
