Warning: Spoilers follow for the first two episodes of The Acolyte!
If you've seen Russian Doll then you'll know that The Acolyte creator Leslye Headland likes to blow our minds and twist our expectations as much as possible. So when she was announced as the showrunner of a Disney+ Star Wars series, expectations were high. And now that the first two episodes have dropped, it's clear that Headland is still up to her mind-bending tricks.
In the two-episode premiere of the newest entry in the Star Wars Universe, the series introduces a massive reveal that was somehow kept under wraps until the show debuted: The Acolyte's star, Amandla Stenberg, isn't playing one role but two. The character that was teased in the trailers, Mae, is actually one half of a set of twins — both played by Stenberg — the other being our actual in-character, the courageous ex-Jedi mechnik Osha.
It’s rare these days that a project of this size can still surprise viewers, but The Acolyte does just that. The massive twist was always a part of Headland's plan, but it evolved as she worked on the show and found her creative groove.
“It's interesting because I had pitched them originally just as sisters,” Headland tells IGN. “But once I had gotten the job, the more that I worked on it, it felt like exploring the Light and the Dark Side and the balance or imbalance between those two things, it felt more interesting to me that the sisters were twins.”
Later, Headland made an intriguing discovery that seemed to cement her new vision for Mae and Osha.
“That being said, I found out later that Kathleen Kennedy is a twin, which I didn't know at the time,” says Headland. “So, obviously, she was onboard with that idea.”
Introducing Osha
For Stenberg, crafting the dual performance was all about defining how their life as twins had shaped both Mae and Osha, and working out how to showcase that as a performer.
“Well, twins are so fascinating, so the first thing I really had to think about is what kinds of twins are they?” says the actress. “There are some twins who feel incredibly identical visually, but also in their mannerisms and their personalities and their spirits. … And because this was built with the intention and purpose of exploring the Light and Dark Side of the Force, I felt like it would actually be great to differentiate them from each other. And then also just from a storytelling perspective, I thought that would just be more fun to watch.”
Stenberg also teased that as the show goes on we'll learn more about Osha and Mae and their connection to the Force.
“So I often thought about the Light and Dark Side of the Force and what we could convey about the Force through these two physical manifestations of the Force,” she says. “And later, I think you'll learn more about that. And some of the choices that I made will make even more sense, hopefully.”
The action begins after the death of a Jedi at the hands of Mae, who everyone thinks is dead. This leads to Osha being blamed for the killing. When her former teacher Master Sol (Lee Jung-Jae) learns that Osha has been accused of killing Master Indara, he and two of his fellow Jedi – Jeckie (Dafne Keen), his loyal half-Theelin Padawan, and Yord (Charlie Barnett), a recent addition to the Order who once trained alongside Osha – head out on a mission to bring the ex-Jedi to justice.
Just as Mae and Osha are bringing something new to the Star Wars universe, so is the way The Acolyte presents the Jedi's role in the galaxy. Not only are we in The High Republic, an era that's never been seen onscreen in live action before, and one in which the Jedi are at the height of their power, but we're also seeing the Jedi as harsh leaders, using shocking tactics that will likely change people's concept of the Order as inherently good or moral. In the face of that though, we meet Master Sol who defies many of the Jedi's strict and often emotionless rules.
I was really excited to explore their balance.
“
For Squid Game star Lee Jung-Jae, this aspect of The Acolyte was one of the things that instantly appealed to him about the series.
“This is an element that I thought was the most interesting part of the show actually,” he tells IGN. “I really wanted my role of Master Sol to encompass a lot of humanistic aspects, and I wanted to be able to express that element really well. I like that he is so direct and has such strong emotions, especially towards Osha. You would think that a Jedi Master never feels fear, but Master Sol actually does feel that fear. I really paid attention to how he expresses that and wanted to create such a unique model of a Jedi in that way because not only are they just brave, I think having that human element to a Jedi is really important.”
The new vision of the Jedi was also something that Barnett was drawn to immediately about playing Yord.
“I was really excited to explore their balance, being able to explore these Jedi from a place of — for lack of better words — finding their humanity, finding out that Yoda, even as good as he is, could be pushing for something more,” says Barnett. “Yord puts a lot of his eggs in the basket of ‘the Jedi are going to push this galaxy to the places that it needs to be.’ And you know when putting a lot of eggs in the basket, it's always a little bit dangerous.”
As she attempts to kill the Jedi on her list, Mae's only ally is the shifty survivor Qimir. He's a rare main character in the galaxy far, far away, as he isn't aligned with either side of the Force and is instead just trying to survive. It's something that Manny Jacinto, who plays the character, found intriguing.
“It's very much coming at it from a standpoint of how does a regular person navigate such huge powers in this galaxy?” says Jacinto. “What is your weapon? What is your power if you have to fend off the Dark Side? If you have to fend off Jedi? With Qimir, it's just very much his own path.”
That side of Qimir is key to the character's relationship with Mae.
“There's a relationship there, but maybe it's more so from a selfish standpoint,” continues Jacinto. “How does he use Mae in order to appease her and her master in order for him to survive? At the end of the day, it just comes down to how a regular person survives in these extraordinary circ*mstances.”
Now that the secret at the core of The Acolyte is out, Jacinto is also full of praise for Stenberg's dueling performances.
“Kudos to Amandla,” he says. “I'm honestly just in awe of her performance. Playing twin roles is obviously a challenge and maybe the go-to is to go to the extreme of things. But with Amandla's performance, it's very nuanced. It's very up close and you see it more so in her eyes as opposed to big gestures and distinct variations within both twins. It's very, very subtle, which I really appreciate.”
There's another aspect to the twins at the center of The Acolyte too and that's the way that the pair use the Force – or in Osha's case, don't. It's clear that Osha, after leaving the Jedi Order, didn't continue her training, and we see her struggle to use the Force as she tries to escape the prisoner transport she’s trapped on during the premiere episode. That's juxtaposed with Mae who has been training with a mysterious master, and the fruits of that labor are clear in her stunning hand to hand Force fighting style that invokes Hong Kong cinema, with fluid wirework and brutal strikes.
“We had an incredible action choreographer, Chris Cowan, who also worked on the Darth Vader scene in Rogue One,” explains Headland. “He came up under Brad Allen, who's just a legend. … Chris and I worked really close together in crafting them. But Chris was the one that really was able to bring his enormous amount of skill to making these more nuanced, less action-y. It was much more graceful, lots of wire work, incredible stunt doubles. The stunt team, Kalina and Cassie, who doubled for Amandla and Mark Ginther, were all people that were instrumental in bringing that to life."
Stenberg described it as one of the most collaborative experiences in her career.
“I have a little experience with stunt choreography, but this was really my first time deep-diving into it,” says the actress. “And we would have these fantastic meetings between Chris Cowan, our stunt coordinator, and Junchang Lu, who was my trainer and my kung fu master, and Leslye in pre-production. And thankfully, we had all this time in pre-production to think about these things together. … I started to formulate what I thought the character physically moved like, I was able to communicate that to my stunt girls, Cassie and Kalina, and talk to Chris and Leslye about it. And something that I saw already in the script was that this character had a tendency to be deceptive, that she didn't necessarily always win through brute force, but often that it was through some kind of trickery or subversion.”
That led to the unusual and striking aesthetic of Mae's fighting style, which leans more into grace and quickness than brute force.
“It seemed more interesting to me to have a female action archetype that was quite feminine and seductive, and didn't necessarily always showcase her brute force, but rather was almost physically manipulative,” says Stenberg.
We'll have to wait and see whether or not Osha regains her Force powers in time to face down Mae's mysterious master, but for now we'll be rewatching those epic fight scenes and theorizing about just who might have been training Mae in the shadows of the Jedi Empire…
Rosie Knight is a contributing freelancer for IGN covering everything from anime to comic books to kaiju to kids movies to horror flicks. She has over half a decade of experience in entertainment journalism with bylines at Nerdist, Den of Geek, Polygon, and more.
