Star Wars: The Acolyte’s Amandla Stenberg Addresses Qimir and Osha Romance

Star Wars: The Acolyte came to an end on Disney+ this week, and it left many fans wanting more, especially those who ship a romance between Osha (Amandla Stenberg) and Qimir AKA The Stranger (Manny Jacinto). At the end of the season finale, “The Acolyte,” Osha goes off to train with Qimir, and in their final moment of the episode, he takes her hand as they stare out into the ocean of the unnamed planet. The “Oshamir” shippers felt pretty validated by the episode, and now they’re eagerly awaiting news of a second season. During a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly, Stenberg addressed the potential romance between Osha and Qimir.

“That was Manny’s idea,” Stenberg said of the hand-hold moment. “We pitched a lot of different things, and now we’re getting tons of shippers, of course, on Twitter and Tumblr and people who are now calling it Oshamir. And they really wanted to see some romantic arc take place with Qimir and Osha, which totally get it. And that was the original vision.”

“But as we arrived to that point in filming, again, we returned to Osha’s choices and this sense of it feeling autonomous, and we just came to the decision that we didn’t feel like a romantic resolution was quite earned yet. And we also wanted Osha’s journey to be autonomous from that arc. And so we decided, ‘Okay, you know what? Let’s table it for now,’” she added. 

“We also just felt like there was a lot of weight and significance in the political alignment that’s happening between those two characters, and Osha internally reaching this place that Qimir has been pushing her towards. We wanted to keep the focus on that, and we were like, ‘What’s some sort of symbol that we can utilize that connotes a political alignment between them and this union?’ But also there’s a lot of intimacy in that sort of shared vision and power, and Manny came up with instead of holding hands, they’re going to hold the lightsaber together, which we just thought was awesome.”

“He would pitch things like that all the time. Whenever there is intimacy or physical representations of their intimacy, a lot of it was Manny’s idea, and we just leaned in,” she explained. 

“Yeah, totally,” Stenberg added when EW brought up the fact that there’s never been a full Dark Side romance in live-action before. “And I think that’s just also Leslye’s [Headland] sensibilities. [Laughs] Leslye is a Sith and I’m a Scorpio, and so I think that appeals to both of us. Also, because of where we exist in the timeline, it makes it more interesting to explore that kind of intimate connection because the Sith exists in the underbelly of the universe, and so they are not the dominating forces of the universe at that point, which I think is kind of more fodder for what is an underdog relationship like at this point in the timeline.” 

Manny Jacinto Addresses Oshamir:

“In the fan art I’ve seen, there’s a good amount that implies… something between Osha and the Stranger,” Jacinto told GQ. “That’s something that people, I think, have been yearning for in this genre, or at least in this IP, and I love that people are honing in on it and encouraging it. So I think people can look forward to more of that, possibly. If people want it, we can explore that in a subsequent season.”

While fans will certainly be excited to hear this, The Acolyte showrunner Leslye Headland recently told IndieWire that Osha and Qimir are probably “doomed.”

“Even though [Osha and Qimir] are standing there, sort of looking out at the sunset, ready to conquer the world, the tragedy is we know they don’t,” Headland explained. “We know there can only be two. We know Plagueis is there. We know that these two are doomed in some way. So to me, it’s a bittersweet tragedy, this foreboding ending. But that’s because I know about the Sith lineage and all these other things, whereas I think a different subset of the audience can be like, ‘They’re married!’”

The Acolyte is now streaming on Disney+.