Streaming Wars is a weekly opinion column by IGN’s Streaming Editor, Amelia Emberwing. To read the last Star Wars entry, check out The Jedi Don't Own the Force: The Acolyte Is Changing Everything We Know About the "Good Guys"
This interview with Amandla Stenberg contains spoilers for The Acolyte.
There were some bumps in the road but, by and large, The Acolyte really struck me. I love Star Wars, but it’s been a while since the story felt fresh (regardless of how much I adore Andor). The nature of my job means that I watch a silly amount of movies and TV, so having any series that leaves me excitedly thinking “new episode today!” is a win. That’s not to say that there hasn’t been remarkable television both in and outside the Disneyverse (again, I think Andor walks on water), it's just that it’s so rare that something about the franchise feels new. We watched a lightsaber — the symbol of trust that Sol (Lee Jung-jae) offers Osha as a child — bleeding as a protagonist fell to the dark side in real time, for crying out loud!
There’s nothing wrong with being comfy — I think the Obi-Wan Kenobi show is essentially pointless, but still had a perfectly pleasant time while we were on the ride — but damn if a story actually feeling refreshing isn’t exhilarating when there is simply so many of them to wade through. It’s for this very reason that Star Wars needs a second season of The Acolyte.
The idea of something set in the past shaking up a franchise feels antithetical, but The Acolyte explores aspects of the galaxy far, far away that Star Wars has barely touched on before now. Creator Leslye Headland is nudging the audience to reevaluate what it knows about the Jedi, Sith and Force-users as a whole while introducing something that canon Star Wars has barely even acknowledged in the past: romance. The franchise has had a chaste kiss here, or an absent husband there but, despite the cast including some of the hottest people in history, and all of us loving Han and Leia, the idea of romantic love or longing has never really played noteworthy part in the story beyond some woopsie-doodle sister smoochin’ and some longing looks from repressed Jedi.
I may not be much of a romance fan on the whole, but I’ll be damned if it didn’t have my attention on The Acolyte, in no small part thanks to Amandla Stenberg and Manny Jacinto’s absolutely electric chemistry. New ideas — and new subgenres — are exactly the kind of things that long-running franchises need to survive, not just because the same old stuff gets tired, but because you’ll never reach new fans if you’re constantly repeating the same song.
I needed somewhere to put all of the energy The Acolyte finale left me with, so I sat down with Amandla Stenberg, who stars as both Osha and Mae in the series, to chat through the lore, liberation and love that Osha experienced in her descent to acolyte status.
From the beginning, it was clear that Headland and Stenberg were committed to ensuring that Osha was a fully realized character. She’s more than her witchly and Jedi origins from the start, but she remains trapped by her own rage and grief until finally killing Sol for murdering her mother and lying to her about the Jedi’s role in the death of her coven. Your mileage on Sol’s demise may vary, but it is in this moment that Osha finally steps into and owns her power after running from it for 16 years.
“It feels so lovely to hear you put it that way, because that's how I think about it and how Leslye thinks about it too,” Stenberg starts. “I mean, it felt important to create somebody who didn't feel in true alignment with their power and who was having the very human experience of being afraid of their own power, of not knowing exactly where they belonged, of feeling a discomfort in self and a disconnection from the Force. And all of that being due to a lifelong relationship to suppressing her own emotions.”
There are few things more freeing than finally understanding your sense of self and sensing a clear path forward. But one thing that a lot of female-focused stories often struggle with is getting too wrapped up in the Strong Female Character™ trope and forgetting that capable, self-realized women shouldn’t immediately be assumed to be shrews or incapable of connection. It’s here that Headland really nails the connection between Osha and Qimir (with, of course, loads of help from that aforementioned chemistry between Stenberg and Jacinto).
“Osha is desperately in need of connection and understanding,” Stenberg confirms. “The Stranger [Jacinto’s Qimir] is kind of the first person to provide that for her in a truly authentic way, without trying to make her be anything else [...] I think that kind of understanding has a lot of romantic tension in it. And so, it's sort of born out of those characters, the points they are in their life.”
The Acolyte Finale Kiss(?) That Wasn’t
This feels like an odd thing to say while the (earned) outcry over Twisters cutting a kiss between its two leads (of course it would have been corny! It’s a Twister movie!) is happening in real time, but Stenberg hinted that there was almost a kiss between Osha and the Stranger that was ultimately decided against.
“Manny actually had the idea that instead of it being the physical intimacy of romance, that actually we're holding the lightsaber together,” Stenberg explains. “And I also just think that there's something very piping hot tea about that as well.”
Ma’am, y’all were clearly right, because the internet delightfully lost its collective mind!
In the end, a lot of thought went into the relationship between Osha and Qimir, and how it affected the character(s) and Osha’s autonomy specifically in the final moments of the finale.
“Osha goes through such a change in self [...] that we actually felt like the moment, just [needed to be about] Osha coming into her own power and relinquishing her connection to her past, which she didn't know was imprisoning her, but it was,” Stenberg confirms. “All of that felt like it was a very clear story about autonomy and a woman making choices for herself, that when we got to the romantic portion of the plotline, we just thought, we don't know if this is fully earned yet.”
(That “earned” part is what makes this lack of intimacy the correct choice vs. the Twisters situation, by the way.)
Osha and Qimir Violate the Sith Rule of Two, But Does It Matter?
On paper, Osha and Qimir violate the Sith’s Rule of Two. However, in execution, we don’t actually have confirmation that either character is a Sith. Between Jedi law and Sith rules, the High Republic era feels packed with people trying to decide how others use the Force, but why should Osha and Qimir be beholden to them? “An acolyte is somebody who studies, as an apprentice, but is not necessarily within the Rule of Two,” Stenberg notes.
Headland has discussed the Rule of Two, and confirmed to IndieWire that it would ultimately doom Osha and Qimir because of Darth Plagueis’ eventual rise to power, but that’s largely because of the very problem that is central to The Acolyte’s — and specifically Qimir’s — story: the Jedi and the Sith both seek to control how the Force is used. Meanwhile, Headland has confirmed that the playing of the Kylo Ren theme alongside The Stranger was intentional, hinting at a connection to the Knights of Ren (even if their wanton destruction doesn’t seem inline with Qimir’s current motives). That means that, going forward, we have the potential to see the series’ leads going against both the Jedi and the Sith.
“Hopefully we'll have the opportunity to answer those questions, because we've had very in-depth conversations about them and continue to,” Stenberg notes on the Rule of Two being explored further. (Season 2 hasn’t been confirmed, so there’s no future plot to hide just yet.)
“I get very excited at the idea of being able to play an Osha who is fully embodied in herself,” Stenberg continues. “The whole process of Season 1 [...] feels more like a backstory, of exploring how a person arrives to that place, on the dark side of the Force [...] When you play a bad guy, you can't just think, ‘Oh, they're a bad guy.’ You have to think of them as motivated by all of the things that have happened to them. And that's the nature of life too. So I mean, that would just be so awesome and fun to get into. And I really hope I have the chance to.”
Clearly, I really hope she and the rest of the cast and crew have the opportunity to do so, too. The Acolyte has some growing to do so far as story cohesion is concerned, but I’m simply not willing to say goodbye to a show that makes Star Wars feel fresh again.
Some quotes have been edited or condensed for clarity.
Amelia is the entertainment Streaming Editor here at IGN. She's also a film and television critic who spends too much time talking about dinosaurs, superheroes, and folk horror. You can usually find her with her dog, Rogers. There may be cheeseburgers involved. Follow her across social @ThatWitchMia
