Star Wars: The Acolyte Casts Amandla Stenberg

While much of the Star Wars fandom has been focusing on the development of projects featuring beloved and well-known figures from the galaxy far, far away, one of the more secretive corners of the franchise has been in development in the form of Star Wars: The Acolyte. Despite how little is known about the upcoming TV series, Star Wars confirmed today that The Hate U Give star Amandla Stenberg has joined the project, seemingly in the lead role. The news was confirmed when Star Wars shared Stenberg’s Instagram post from San Diego Comic-Con 2022 in which they posed with a number of different costumes and props from the upcoming Star Wars: Andor, while they were sporting some Darth Maul gear.

“Next stop: a galaxy far, far away…” Stenberg captioned their post. “I am so excited to finally announce I’m joining Star Wars: The Acolyte! Honored is an understatement. May the Force be with you.”

Stenberg has also appeared in the films The Hunger Games, Dear Evan Hansen, and the upcoming horror film Bodies Bodies Bodies. The Acolyte comes from showrunner Leslye Headland.

Another reason fans are looking forward to the upcoming series is that it is set to be the first live-action project set before the events of the Skywalker Saga, as it is set 100 years before Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. Headland previously explained her passion for all corners of Star Wars lore and how she drew inspiration from elements of the Star Wars Legends realm of stories.

“The truth is that I, as a major mega fan, came to them with this idea. And I said, ‘I think the best place to put this is in an era you guys have not quite explored yet,’” Headland revealed to Vanity Fair earlier this year. “They were very enthusiastic. It wasn’t that they didn’t want to explore that [existing] world, but I think that they already were because The Mandalorian and a lot of the other television projects were really relying on legacy characters.”

She continued, “I was coming at it as a fan who was much more into the RPG that the Extended Universe feeds on. I came hard at that in the ’90s, and then got introduced to [Star Wars:] The Clone Wars. I knew the timeline really well. And I was like, ‘I think if you want to explore Star Wars from the perspective of the bad guys, the best time to do it is when the bad guys are wildly outnumbered. When they actually are essentially the underdogs, for lack of a better term.’ So this would be that era.”

Stay tuned for details on Star Wars: The Acolyte.

Are you looking forward to the new series?  Let us know in the comments or contact Patrick Cavanaugh directly on Twitter to talk all things Star Wars and horror!