Star Wars: The Acolyte Showrunner on Her Favorite Version of the Franchise

The Star Wars franchise is set to branch out into some interesting directions in the next few years, both on the big screen and on Disney+. One of the most intriguing among them is Star Wars: The Acolyte, a Disney+ TV series that will be set within the newly-established High Republic era of canon. The series will be showrun by Russian Doll and Sleeping With Other People's Leslye Headland, who has previously expressed her heartfelt love for the entire Star Wars franchise. In a recent interview with The AV Club, Headland revealed her fondness for Star Wars RPG games, and argued that they show the potential of the franchise as a whole.

"To me, that kind of stuff is so fun, because I also played some Star Wars RPGs," Headland explained. "And that's my favorite version of Star Wars, the Star Wars where you get to make up your own Star Wars. So when people are like, what's your favorite film? And what's your favorite piece of media? I'm like, "I just really love the RPGs." To me, that's what Star Wars is, is being able to walk into a universe and start playing. If you can't do that with the movie, television show, novel comic book, video game, then I'm not sure you've done what you need to do as a creator of Star Wars material."

While a lot of details are unknown about The Acolyte, we do know that it will be a mystery-thriller that will take viewers into a galaxy of shadowy secrets and emerging dark-side powers in the final days of the High Republic era. Previous reports have indicated that the series will revolve around a female protagonist.

"Just because my show is technically, yes, 'female-centric', meaning it centers around a female protagonist, I don't think that necessarily excludes men from that space," Headland explained during a previous interview with Fantastic Frankey. "I relate to male characters all the time. I root for Mando. I root for Luke... An inclusive space means an inclusive space. But at the same time, I think that just because something has a female protagonist doesn't necessarily mean it's only for women."

"I kind of see, if Star Wars is a religion... I like to think of my show as a tent revival," Headland continued. "You can come over if you want to. We're going to be talking about some cool stuff. There's going to be some things we haven't discussed in the canon yet. There are going to be some characters you don't know about. I would love you to join us. I would love you to be interested in it. If it's not your thing -- the cool thing about Star Wars right now is there's so much you can align yourself with and get invested in, but if you don't like it, that's fine."

Are you excited to see Star Wars: The Acolyte? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below!