One of the biggest selling points of Star Wars: The Acolyte was that the TV show was set in the High Republic era, far removed from the timeframe of the Skywalker Saga. The main plot takes place around 100 years before the events of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, meaning there wouldn’t be an abundance of legacy characters running around. Still, showrunner Leslye Headland found ways to connect The Acolyte to the overarching Star Wars story. In what ended up being the series finale (The Acolyte was cancelled after just one season), fans got their first look at live-action Darth Plagueis. A couple of years later, some secrets about the Sith’s cameo have been revealed.
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Unsurprisingly, the topic of Plagueis is addressed in the book The Art of Star Wars: The Acolyte (now available for purchase). In it, Headland explained what she wanted to do with the character. “I knew I wanted to do what they did with Gollum in The Fellowship of the Ring, where you get a sense of this character, the size of the eyes and his coloring, but I didn’t want to do something in full-on daylight,” she said. “When you see his hand move, with your point of view being the main characters, it feels like you know about the threat before the main characters do.”
Why Darth Plagueis Only Had a Cameo in The Acolyte
Also in the book, Headland shared why Plagueis was held back until the final episode. “I had always wanted the end of the season to introduce Plagueis,” she said. “Having him come in the middle felt like it was going to be too loaded. So we decided to establish the era, the main characters, and the storyline, and then put Plagueis in as the larger threat.” As revealed by The Acolyte star Manny Jacinto in late 2024, if the show had been renewed for more seasons, the plan called for an expansion of Plagueis’ role. The actor didn’t share any details beyond that, but based on Headland’s comments in the book, it’s likely Plagueis would have emerged as the show’s main villain.
Though it ended up being a cliffhanger that will never be resolved, it was the smart choice to wait for the finale to reveal Plagueis. Headland is right in saying it was more important to establish the characters and story early on before launching into a major Sith connection. Unlike every other Star Wars movie and TV show (which have been set in roughly the same 67-year period encompassing the Skywalker Saga), The Acolyte is part of a very different time in galactic history. That meant the creative team essentially had to ease viewers in, getting viewers accustomed to something that felt familiar but different. Fans were also meeting an entirely new cast of characters for the first time, and it was important to get viewers invested in that ensemble first.
Basically, the goal was to have The Acolyte stand on its own before adding in a major connection to the Skywalker Saga. If Plagueis had been introduced earlier in the season, it would have distracted from the main narrative. All viewers would have wanted to know is what was going to happen next with Plagueis. Keeping him as a surprise cameo for the finale ensured Headland and Co. could primarily focus on The Acolyte‘s compelling Jedi murder-mystery plot out of the gate, giving that storyline the attention it needed. There was a lot to unpack in The Acolyte, and since Headland was banking on getting more seasons, there was no need to rush to the Plagueis twist.
In retrospect, knowing that The Acolyte ended up being cancelled, some may wonder if the show would have been better served if Plagueis was brought into the picture sooner. An argument can be made that establishing the villain earlier would have been a way to generate buzz for the show, perhaps countering the polarizing opinions people had about it. It’s worth wondering what The Acolyte might have looked like if Plagues appeared in one of the first episodes, but it’s hard to blame Headland for her decision. In the moment, it made a lot of sense, and it’s just unfortunate things didn’t work out the way they planned.
The Acolyte‘s Plagueis Design Drew From Star Wars History
Bringing a character as significant as Plagueis to live-action for the first time seems like it would be a daunting task, but it wasn’t too difficult for the talented Acolyte team. It helped that they weren’t starting with a blank slate; there was enough of a foundation to draw from in other Star Wars materials. Plagueis’ species, the Muun, had previously been featured elsewhere, providing Headland & Co. with the perfect jumping off point. “We looked at a lot of reference of Muun characters, from the prequels, The Clone Wars, and some game art,” said VFX supervisor Julian Foddy. “We just want to see the flash of the character; the casual viewer might not even notice him or know it’s Darth Plagueis. So, it wasn’t so much about designing the character but designing the shots around that direction.”
Amazingly, Industrial Light & Magic knocked it out of the park on the first try. VFX producer Carlos Ciudad remarked that the first Plagueis design brought Headland to tears. “She literally said, ‘This is exactly what I had in my head. You just made my dreams [a reality],’” he said. And though The Acolyte proved to be divisive, many fans probably share Headland’s sentiment when it comes to Plagueis. Ever since Palpatine told Anakin the tragedy of the wise Sith Lord, people have wanted to learn more about Plagueis and see him in action. It was exciting to see the character finally realized in live-action after all this time, teasing thrilling developments to come.
Headland’s Gollum comparison is apt. In the The Fellowship of the Ring, audiences only get a taste of the creature, who’s largely obscured in shadows as he follows the Fellowship through the Mines of Moria. That bit was included to merely establish Gollum’s presence in the story before he received a larger role in the subsequent films. Plagueis’ cameo in The Acolyte served a similar purpose. Much like Gollum in Fellowship, the character design wasn’t truly a full-on reveal so much as it was just a hint of what to expect. It would have been interesting to see if any tweaks would have been made to Plagueis had The Acolyte continued. The general outline might have remained the same, but there could have been some changes to certain details to make the character more expressive and interesting to watch.
It was anticlimactic that such a major reveal was undercut by The Acolyte‘s cancellation. The odds of the show ever being revived are low, which means there may not be another opportunity to see Plagueis in live-action. Lucasfilm has plenty of new Star Wars projects in development, but none of them seem like an organic landing spot for Plagueis, who presumably died prior to the main events of the prequel trilogy (official Star Wars canon doesn’t have a set date for Plagueis’ demise). If we never see Plagueis in live-action again, it’ll be a frustrating fate for a character who had so much potential. Hopefully, there’s some way he can return, but it remains to be seen if Lucasfilm would be interested in exploring that time period again.
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Image courtesy of Tor Books/Macmillan -
Official art by Bastien Lecouffe-Deharme
