There’s a lot on the Disney Plus Star Wars slate. We have a season and a half of Andor, the much-anticipated Ahsoka, a Spielberg-inspired adventure in Skeleton Crew, and the third season of The Mandalorian all on the way. But there’s one upcoming show about which we know very little: Star Wars: The Acolyte.
The show is billed as “a mystery thriller that will take us into a galaxy of shadowy secrets and emerging Dark Side powers in the final days of the High Republic era” and comes via showrunner Leslye Headland, creator of the Emmy-Award-winning Russian Doll. The Acolyte recently hit a production snag that may see it delayed an entire year, but despite it not potentially not arriving until 2024, some fans think they have its number.
A discussion on r/StarWars on fans’ predictions for the show concludes that a show with a Dark Side protagonist can only go one way:
It’s a safe bet as we’ve seen this exact story countless times across Star Wars media. This may be understandable, as Disney wouldn’t be happy about a show where the lead character’s arc sees them start at evil and then get much worse.
Other fans at least hope that the turn to the light will come late in the season:
Can Disney write morally questionable characters? Let’s hope this is more Andor and less The Book of Boba Fett:
But there are some cast-iron predictions that are as inevitable as the tides:
And that:
Theoretically, The Acolyte has a lot going for it. Setting the story at the end of the High Republic means the writers essentially have a blank canvas to work from and won’t have to worry about crowbarring yet another powerful Dark Side force user into the already very busy Skywalker saga. The only characters from the movies that might appear are Yoda and potentially Darth Plagueis (Palpatine’s master mentioned in Revenge of the Sith).
We’ve got a long wait until we see anything official from The Acolyte, but let’s hope we get a few sneak peeks from the shoot that’ll clue us into what we’re getting in 2024.