The Acolyte, Disney’s divisive Star Wars TV series, would have featured a surprising connection to Kylo Ren in the sequel trilogy if it wasn’t canceled, according to creator Leslye Headland.
The show was set 100 years before Episode I – The Phantom Menace when the Jedi Order was at the height of its powers at a time of peace in the galaxy. It followed Osha (Amandla Stenberg), a former padawan, who reunites with her old master to investigate why several Jedi had been assassinated.
The show was infamously review bombed by a portion of fans who largely complained about inclusive characters in the storyline. However, the press reaction was more positive, and it earned a 79% critic score against the 19% audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
Now, a new book reveals that the show would have been connected to Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) in the sequel trilogy if it was given a second season.
The Stranger would have created the cult that Kylo Ren belongs to
In a new excerpt from The Art of The Acolyte book, Headland revealed that The Acolyte villain, Qimir/The Stranger, would have eventually started the cult that Kylo Ren joined after leaving the Jedi order as a young man.
“It was in the design of the character, as well as knowing that we were going to introduce Darth Plagueis, who has to end up with Palpatine as his apprentice,” the showrunner wrote.
“Following the Rule of Two – a precept that limited the Sith to just two at any given time, a master and an apprentice – one way to keep it going it is if the Stranger is the first Knight of Ren, part of a Sith-adjacent cult that we know eventually survives.”
As Headland points out, the Knights of Ren are separate from the Sith, but they definitely lean towards the dark side of the Force. Some of the knights appeared in The Force Awakens and The Rise of Skywalker in non-speaking roles alongside Kylo, but it was never really explained onscreen who they were underneath their masks, or why Kylo aligned himself with them.
Perhaps it would’ve been interesting to explore Kylo’s relationship with the Knights of Ren in the Ben Solo movie Adam Driver was developing with Steven Soderbergh before Disney scrapped the idea. Who knows, maybe it’ll come to fruition one day.
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