Star Wars: The Acolyte’s Manny Jacinto Teases Potential Romance in Season 2

Star Wars: The Acolyte came to an end on Disney+ this week, and many fans are eager for a Season 2 announcement. The finale, “The Acolyte,” featured a lot of twists and turns and ended with Osha (Amandla Stenberg) going off to train with Qimir AKA The Stranger (Manny Jacinto). Despite the fact that Qimir did some pretty bad things throughout the season, many fans are shipping a romance between him and Osha. The “Oshamir” shippers felt pretty validated when the show ended with the duo together, especially considering Qimir took Osha’s hand in a pretty romantic way. While a Season 2 hasn’t been confirmed, Jacinto is teasing a possible romance in the future between Qimir and Osha. 

“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!’”

Manny Jacinto and Leslye Headland Address Review Bombing:

While chatting with GQ, Jacinto also addressed the review-bombing that has been especially bad during The Acolyte. 

“It’s a cycle,” Jacinto explained when talking about Star Wars fans. “With everything that’s come out since the original trilogy, there’s always a very passionate group that doesn’t like change, that wants that same feeling that they experienced when they were kids, only now they’ve grown up and their taste has matured and they’re more critical about art or the world, and then they are just more precious about the things that they experienced when they were younger.”

“Everybody knows what review bombing is like. Truly when the show first came out, my publicist was like, ‘OK, with the review…’ I was like, ‘Does anybody take that seriously anymore?’” Headland confirmed to Collider earlier this month. “I understand the point of it, which is that the average viewer would look at the site and say, ‘Oh, the user review is really low.’ But I think that, if you’re in the Star Wars fandom, I think you already know what review bombing is.” 

She continued, “So I guess if you’re totally new to the fandom and you’re considering watching the show, it could affect you. But I also think that my work in the past has been very word-of-mouth anyway, so I don’t know if it … I think that because, behind the scenes, we all know what it is — it’s not that it’s not concerning — but I think it’s pretty expected. I would say.”

The Acolyte is now streaming on Disney+.