Star Wars: The Acolyte’s Joonas Suotamo Reacts to Wookiee Jedi Kelnacca’s Surprise Reveal

The fourth episode of Star Wars: The Acolyte, “Day,” was released on Disney+ this week and it featured a big shocker. It was previously revealed that Mae (Amandla Stenberg) was hunting down the Jedi who were present on her home planet of Brendok when every member of her witch coven was killed. While the events of their family’s death remain a mystery thanks to some intriguing inconsistencies in the show’s flashback episode, it’s clear Mae holds a grudge against the Jedi. In the first two episodes, Mae was responsible for the death of Indara (Carrie-Anne Moss) and Torbin (Dean-Charles Chapman), and at the start of “Day,” only Sol (Lee Jung-jae) and Kelnacca (Joonas Suotamo) remained alive. 

WARNING: Spoilers below for Star Wars: The Acolyte Episode 4 

While Sol is still on the board, Kelnacca met a tragic end in the latest episode of The Acolyte. However, it wasn’t Mae who wielded the saber that killed him. During a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly, Suotamo addressed the Jedi Wookiee’s death.

“No, that wasn’t discussed,” Suotamo revealed when asked if series creator Leslye Headland told him Kelnacca would meet an early end. “I learned it as we went, and it was very surprising. So I wasn’t aware initially, but ever since studying film at university, I’ve been on the story side as well, so I thought it was a necessary thing to happen in terms of it follows the story and is very sad and very dramatic. And what a shock too to see all these powerful Jedi to meet their fate in such a way!”

“I think it’s bold,” he added of the Jedi deaths. “I think this whole series was from the get-go. I just knew that Leslye would bring this freshness to this story, and we are seeing it on-screen, clearly. So I was all for it and I knew she could pull it off.” 

Joonas Suotamo Explains Kelnacca:

During Suotomo’s interview, he broke down Kelnacca’s character traits and explained how he played him differently from Chewbacca. 

“Kelnacca is a very proud Jedi,” Suotamo shared with EW. “He’s obviously completed his Jedi training, but I thought he always felt as a bit of an outsider because, obviously, he’s not human-born. So that caused me to think that he’s a bit of a lone wolf sort of thing. So he’s with the others, but he’s also mindful that he might not a hundred percent belong with the other Jedi in that way.”

“It’s in how you carry yourself, your posture, how you move, and all these choices of this physical acting,” he added of the difference between playing Chewbacca and Kelnacca. “And it was actually Rian Johnson when we were filming The Last Jedi, he recommended that I watch the silent masters of cinema – Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton – so that I could learn more about how to show what my character is thinking and what he’s doing. And I’ve tried to do that.

So whenever we get the page, I try to choose ‘How would Kelnacca go about doing what he’s doing?’ And comparing to Chewbacca, he’s very trained, he’s in control of his own desires, and he’s very talented in doing these things that only Jedi can do. He was sort of like a samurai master, but also being of imposing size, that sort of led me to believe that he’s like the Mufasa of Star Wars- that he’s walking there and a very, very imposing figure for the others.” 

The first four episodes of Star Wars: The Acolyte are now streaming on Disney+ with the fifth episode scheduled to drop on Tuesday, June 25th.