'The Acolyte' Trailer Sees A Killer Time For The Jedi In Latest But Earliest-Set 'Star Wars' Series
The Amandla Stenberg-starring series premieres with its first two episodes on June 4 on Disney+
In an age of light, a darkness rises. It’s 50? 100? years before The Phantom Menace, but trouble is already brewing for the Jedi, guardians of peace and justice across the Star Wars galaxy in The Acolyte, which will premiere with two of its eight episodes on Disney+ on June 4 and presumably roll out weekly from there. Lucasfilm released the trailer Tuesday, as they promised with yesterday’s poster release.
The trailer opens with younglings under the tutelage of Lee Jung-jae’s Master Sol, as they learn to be distrustful. Some see light, some see balance, and one sees fire. Subsequently, we see a crowded village and a fight in a cantina between Carrie-Anne Moss’ Master Indara and Amandla Stenberg’s Jedi-targeting assassin. The series will see Master Sol forced to face Stenberg, who was once his padawan in their past, now a “dangerous warrior”. As more clues emerge, they travel down a dark path where sinister forces reveal all is not what it seems, the logline describes. A group of Jedi begin the galaxy-wide hunt for the killer to prevent a massacre. The trailer finishes off with the Jedi unsheathe their lightsabers in a wide array of colors including yellow and and Jedi charging as the assassin collects her red lightsaber she controlled from a distance as it sliced through the trees. Deserts and snowy biomes return. A glimpse of Joonas Suotamo as Wookiee Jedi Kelnacca is also seen.
In addition to Stenberg, Jung-jae, Moss, and Suotamo, the series stars The Good Place and Hailey’s On It!’s Manny Jacinto, Logan’s Dafne Keen, Russian Doll’s Charlie Barnett, Dean-Charles Chapman, and Tron: Ares’s Jodie Turner-Smith. It's been revealed that there are four directors, including creator and showrunner Leslye Headland, who directs the first two episodes. Kogonada directs the third and seventh, Alex Garcia Lopez was tasked with the fourth and fifth, and Hanelle Culpepper had the sixth as well as the eighth, which serves as the season finale.
Kathleen Kennedy, Simon Emanuel, Jeff F. King, and Jason Micallef. Charmaine DeGraté and Kor Adana are the co-executive producers; Rayne Roberts, Damian Anderson, Eileen Shim, and Rob Bredow are producing. Check out the second poster in as many days, with the assassin headed away.
As for whether The Acolyte could go beyond a season, Headland said "I think there’s absolutely room for it to grow," Headland said. "I think that especially nowadays… I’m just the kind of person where I want to make sure a season feels like a legitimately whole story, and I definitely pepper in a lot of like, 'Here’s how it could go this way, it could go that way.' I also don’t want to leave the audience hanging emotionally. I want to leave them hanging narratively but emotionally I want them to feel like they’ve watched a whole thing, and then still have a bunch of questions at the end like, 'Wait, now that I’ve learned this relationship exists, what’s going to happen with those people, and now that this person has this type of power, what are we going to do about that?' So I think it can definitely have some of that."
The Acolyte premieres with two episodes on Disney+ on June 4. If there are single episodes released thereafter, the first season finale should be on July 16.
