The Acolyte Cast and Crew Open Up About Those Shocking Deaths

The fifth episode of Star Wars: The Acolyte, “Night,” was released on Disney+ yesterday and it featured the show’s biggest shockers of the season so far. Not only was the true villain unmasked, but some fan-favorite characters did not make it out of the episode alive. Warning: Spoilers for The Acolyte Episode 5 ahead… Qimir (Manny Jacinto) was confirmed to be the red saber-wielding Sith who has been pulling Mae’s (Amandla Stenberg) strings. While battling the Jedi, Qimir killed nearly everyone he fought, including two newly-beloved characters: Jecki (Dafne Keen) and Yord (Charlie Barnett). The heroes went down in a blaze of glory, and Keen and Barnett recently opened up about their big deaths while chatting with Entertainment Weekly alongside Stenberg and series creator Leslye Headland. 

“That’s what I loved about starting with the red shirts,” Headland explained, comparing the unnamed Jedi who died before Jeckie and Yord to the iconic Star Trek victims. “You’re kind of like, ‘Oh, he’s just going to kill a bunch of red shirts, and everybody is going to be fine and… OH MY GOD, JECKI’S DEAD! Okay, I’m listening.’” 

“I just figured someone would stop me and nobody did,” she added with a laugh when talking about the brutality of the kills. “I figured someone would say, ‘This is too far!’ But they didn’t.”

“We were all like, ‘Leslye, the way that you take them out is so brutal!’” Stenberg shared with a laugh. “‘What the hell? What kind of sick, twisted masochist are you?’” Headland replied, “I guess I always thought, ‘Well, Anakin killed a bunch of children, so…’” 

“There are so many directors in blockbuster sagas that are so scared to kill off their characters, and are so comfortable with bringing characters back to life, and all of these little writer tricks that I think are quite cheeky,” Keen added. “And I really like that she was actually killing people. Because if you’re not making it dangerous, then why are we even here? Why are we concerned by the story? Why do we care? Leslye has such a backbone as a writer, to make you fall in love with these characters and then slaughter them all like pigs and be like, ‘Yeah, this is our villain. We’re not just saying he’s so big and scary, we’re actually showing you how big and scary he is.’”

“Honestly, that’s what really sold me,” Keen continued. “That was the first thing she said to me in our meeting. She was like, ‘You might be playing an alien, and you die pretty early on,’ and I was like, ‘I’m in! I love playing dead!’”

“No one ever wants to be cut out of a show,” Barnett explained. “But when you’re playing a character that you know is going to die, it’s a little more fun. If it’s a surprise to you and your job is gone next week, it sucks. But when you know what you’re walking into, you get to have a little more control over it. And I tried to find the lemonade through the lemons.”

“Me and Charlie were joking about that all the time,” Keen, shared. “Whenever we were on set and anyone would be complaining, me and Charlie would be like, ‘Peace out, we’re dying in two weeks!’ … I had so much fun doing the death. It was a huge honor to get to be the person that took the helmet off him … That was something really exciting to me.”

How Many Episodes of The Acolyte Are Left?

Set during The High Republic, Star Wars: The Acolyte delivers an investigation into a mysterious string of crimes, which pits a Jedi master against his former apprentice in a race to uncover the truth. The more that the pair learn about the situation, the darker their journey becomes, as they confront things that darker than either of them could have imagined. The show has a total of eight episodes, which means there are three to go with the finale airing on July 16th. 

The series stars Amandla Stenberg, Lee Jung-jae, Manny Jacinto, Dafne Keen, Charlie Barnett, Jodie Turner-Smith, Rebecca Henderson, Dean-Charles Chapman, Joonas Suotamo, and Carrie-Anne Moss.

Star Wars: The Acolyte is available to stream on Disney+.