Along with the first trailer today, Star Wars: The Acolyte revealed a twist on its June release date: while the show will drop new episodes weekly (as Star Wars series tend to do), it will also debut its season with two episodes on the first day, and then a new episode each week thereafter. Set in the days before the rise of the Empire, The Acolyte will put Star Wars fans into a setting that’s new to live-action, and gives the creatives behind the show a chance to explore the mythology of the Jedi and Sith — along with getting a clean slate that doesn’t have to fall back on existing characters and stories.
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The Acolyte creator Leslye Headland has said that the show will try to fill in some blanks in the worldbuilding, and help audiences understand how the galaxy came to be teetering on the brink by the time Anakin Skywalker came along and pushed it into the abyss.
“We’re taking a look at the political and personal and spiritual things that came up in a time period that we don’t know much about,” Headland explained in a previous interview. “My question when watching The Phantom Menace was always like, ‘Well, how did things get to this point?’ How did we get to a point where a Sith lord can infiltrate the Senate and none of the Jedi pick up on it? Like, what went wrong? What are the scenarios that led us to this moment?’”
“We actually use the term the Renaissance, or the Age of Enlightenment,” Headland added. “The Jedi uniforms are gold and white, and it’s almost like they would never get dirty. They would never be out and about,” Headland says. “The idea is that they could have these types of uniforms because that’s how little they’re getting into skirmishes.”
Here’s the series official synopsis:
The Acolyte is 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. A former Padawan reunites with her Jedi Master to investigate a series of crimes, but the forces they confront are more sinister than they ever anticipated.
The series stars Amandla Stenberg, Lee Jung-jae, Manny Jacinto, Dafne Keen, Jodie Turner-Smith, Rebecca Henderson, Charlie Barnett, Dean-Charles Chapman, Carrie-Anne Moss, and Margarita Levieva. Russian Doll‘s Leslye Headland developed the series.
Star Wars: The Acolyte hits Disney+ on June 4th.
