A Love Letter to Star Wars: The Acolyte

I've been thinking about Star Wars lately. Well, it's more explanatory to say I've been thinking about Star Wars so much more than usual, lately. As a lifelong fan—by which I mean at least since I was approx. five years old—I participated in vast restructurings of the overall narrative more than once. First, the prequel films introduced the idea of midi-chlorians, a genetic component to Force-sensitivity. While the PT has been long vilified by the Fandom Menace, my young age at the time of their theatrical release means they have always held a special place in my heart. It was somewhere around Attack of the Clone's release in 2002 when I met the second extension of Jedi lore—the Extended Universe, now called Legends.

Abbreviations:

• A New Hope ANH
• Empire Strikes Back ESB
• Return of the Jedi RotJ
  • These together are the Original Trilogy OT
• The Phantom Menace TPM
• Attack of the Clones AotC
• Revenge of the Sith RotS
  • These together are the Prequel Trilogy PT
• The Force Awakens TFA
• The Last Jedi TLJ
• Rise of Skywalker RoS
  • These together are the Sequel Trilogy ST
• The Clone Wars, animated, TCW
• Rebels REB
• The Bad Batch TBB
• Ahsoka AHS

By the time I graduated high school, I had read nearly every published novel in the Legends continuum from 1990-ish to 2008 or so. I had read the Timothy Zahn's Heir to the Empire series, loved Kevin J. Anderson's Young Jedi Knights series, and tore through the Legacy comic book series following Cade Skywalker a century after Return of the Jedi. Now, it is well known by now Disney's 2012 acquisition of LucasArts rendered all of this material non-canonical. However, elements, characters, themes, and some story arcs themselves have been transposed into the new Disney canon. This blending of canons, of using an old extended universe continuation as new Legend[ary] material is so fascinating to me. Within the canonical world of Star Wars, both the stories of our real-world Legends as well as the rumors circulating of canonical characters build a mythology characters respond to. For example: when Poe Dameron makes his now famous quip regarding Palpatine/Darth Sideous's return to the Star Wars narrative, he is, as a character, responding to the legends of the Dark Side. Only Luke Skywalker knew for sure what happened in that throne room; for everyone else in the galaxy an unknown Jedi walked into a room with the two most powerful people in the galaxy, and only he came back out.

Which brings me to The Acolyte. Set a century earlier than any other television or cinematic entry to the Star Wars universe, The Acolyte is also the newest addition to the expanding lore. It is at once old and new, reaching inside and outside of timelines within the Star Wars narrative and within the primary "real" world of the audience. I won't be going into too many narrative details here, as I'm formulating a chapter on this subject right now, and want to be able to submit for publication to journals with right of refusal, but I will be speaking about why I'm so jazzed about the narrative The Acolyte seems to be opening for Star Wars fans. I have not been engaging with fandom discussion online because...well, I'm sure you can guess why the Star Wars fandom carries risk. But, there's a lot of anger I'm seeing regarding the idea of canon, of changing canon, and what it means to "retcon" a story.

ret*con, or Retroactive Continuity, a literary device
noun: (in a film, television series, or other fictional work) a piece of new information that imposes a different interpretation on previously described events, typically used to facilitate a dramatic plot shift or account for an inconsistency.
verb: revise (an aspect of a fictional work) retrospectively, typically be introducing a piece of new information that imposes a different interpretation on previously described events.
Merriam-Webster Dictionary "A Short History of 'Retcon'"

It is profoundly difficult to craft a prequel narrative where the stakes feel real. I would posit much of the disappointment surrounding the PT in the early 2000's functions, in part, because of this very lack; we all know who survives, who doesn't, and some of the narrative beats that must happen to end up with A New Hope. The PT is also set much closer to the OT, with only 19 years between RotS and ANH, whereas Acolyte sets itself a century before TPM. Breathing fresh life into a prequel requires a careful dance, then, of using established story points mixed with something new. And it has to be new; why else bother telling the story?

But, what I think The Acolyte is doing by expanding the role of the Force and the position of the Jedi Order within the greater galaxy is not so much a retcon as it is a love letter to the Star Wars that has come before, while extending the narrative into a direction where more people can belong. We can get into the feminist politics of being a Star Wars fan—this NBC news article from this year opens that conversation—but even in Ahsoka, a show narratively positioned around a female hero, I never felt truly seen by the Star Wars narrative. When the assumption remains that the majority of fans, and therefore the fans that have value reach out to, are cishet white men of a certain age, even narratives which seek to follow female characters may fall into similar pitfalls of stereotype. I don't think Dave Filoni, for example, should be the only writer in the writer's room for a character with clear queer connections, portrayed by a Black actress, for multiple reasons. Which doens't mean that LGBTQIA+, female, or minority writers/directors/producers automatically tell more inclusive stories, but they do tell stories from a different lens, shifting the narrative to show different, often hidden, elements that were already present.

This is why I'm a queer medievalist; there were always already queer and gender expansive people in the medieval period, but expectations surrounding the past, in part started by a specific form of academic scrutiny, lead to this homogenized view of the past, of culture, and of storytelling. Shifting The Acolyte to follow a Black female protagonist seems to function as a mark of "wokeness," of adding diversity for diversity's sake, if the detractors are anything to listen to. And yet, Amandla Stenberg is incredible in the role, and her portrayal of Osha and Mae has nothing to do with the fact that the actress is Black, and everything to do with her character growing up in a coven of witches outside the Jedi Order; still an outside, an Other, and a minority, but as those definitions apply to the Star Wars world, not our own.

We see this developed in Episode 3 via Osha's memory of her past, the brutal destruction of her childhood home and the deaths of her mothers and the other women of her coven. I'm writing currently about the authorization of the Force, the systems of education in place during the High Republic, and I'm fascinated by the construction of this cult of witches. The details surrounding this all-female coven are, at this point in the series, vague and presented from an unreliable narrator; this episode is framed entirely from Osha's perspective, her experience as an eight year old child raised in ignorance of the greater galaxy.

The depictions of this coven evoke memories of Star Wars lore from across the new canon and the old Legends, and I think that is its strength. As an Arthurian medievalist, I'm always baffled by contemporary audience's difficulty in accepting a canon which is disrupted, nonlinear, or is otherwise irreparably tangled. The whole point of medieval Arthurian romances was to provide narrative space to continuously add to and embellish the story for your own ends. When Thomas Malory wrote Le Morte d'Arthur, he did so by reworking the French Vulgate Cycle, as well as myriad other French and Latin sources to craft a singular, chronological, narrative for King Arthur's life. But, he doesn't fill in all of the gaps left by earlier narratives, he references his sources when he does this, which in turn

[H]as pointed the reader to a gap in [Malory's] own narrative that could be filled in by further reading—or by further storytelling. In this sense, the colophon is almost an invitation: it announces that the adventures [...] are not complete.
-Mary Frances Zambreno, "Why do Some Stories Keep Returning?: Modern Arthurian Fiction and the Narrative Structure of Romance" Essays in Medieval Studies 26, 2010, pp. 117-127. https://doi.org/10.1353/ems.2010.0006

This has always been the way Star Wars storytelling functions. While the cinematic films garner significantly more viewers than the televised series have thus far, gaps in the films like Poe's significant somehow Palpatine returned remark are just one more example of the narrative pointing to external materials to fill in the gaps. And indeed, Palpatine's return is well-established in the background narrative of The Mandalorian, and occupies a significant portion of The Bad Batch's entire 3 season run. Star Wars, like the medieval Arthurian romances it owes much of its construction to, functions like a palimpsest, 'haunted at all times by their adapted,' and I would posit continued, 'texts.' (Ann F. Howey, "Arthur and Adaptation," Arthuriana 25.4, 2015, pp. 36-50). Howey contents the process of adaptation is inherently one of repetition, but that repetition is not the same as replication, 'to judge an adaptation on fidelity is to assume (incorrectly) that reproducing a source is an intended or achievable goal.' Extended to Star Wars, continued entries into the narrative world are adapting established lore, but they are not replicating the OT, the PT, or even the EU that has now become Legends. Rather, they are engaging with the process of adaptation which makes use of those ghostly traces from prior iterations.

So, when The Acolyte introduces a powerful coven of female Force-uses, who are called witches, all my little Star Wars fan knowledge and medieval romance scholar bells start going off. It's clever and, I believe, intentional, for the construction of these women to remain vague so far. From their first appearance in the Legends novel The Courtship of Princess Leia (1994), witches in Star Wars have occupied a dichotomy of Light Side vs. Dark Side aligned Force-users. Like the Jedi/Sith dichotomy of the series as a whole, witches appear to disrupt conventional understandings of the Force. I keep going back to this clan's mantra:

The power of one. The power of two. The power of many.

Where have we heard something like this before? In the Sith Rule of Two? In the Jedi's lack of attachments, that they may align themselves with compassionate love for the whole galaxy, rather than any single individual? I started reading the High Republic era novelizations to see how the Jedi describe themselves, and it is clear the conception the Jedi have for their role in the greater galaxy and the perception of those outside the established Order towards the Jedi do not align. That tension, this very exploration being undertaken in The Acolyte holds significant story potential to our understanding of the Star Wars narrative world. A century leaves a lot of wiggle room in a large, still partially uncharted, galaxy, and many things can happen before TPM which would only enhance established conversations surrounding the Force.

Obi-wan Kenobi famously tells Anakin that 'only a Sith deals in absolutes,' and yet the dichotomy of Light/Dark the Jedi Order forced the Force into over time is one of the greatest absolutes established thus far within Star Wars. I really think The Acolyte seeks to expand that conversation by illuminating the flaws within the Jedi Order. Obi-wan truly believed what he said, and could not see the irony of his statement at the time. This does not make him a bad man, or even a bad Jedi, but it does show that fissures already appeared in the Jedi Order's understanding of the Force, as presented to audiences.

Spoilers for Episode 5 'Night'

When I said earlier The Acolyte feels like a love letter to Star Wars, I can see it clearly in the reveal of the Dark Side antagonist for the series. There were so many elements reminiscent of the PT, and of the famous Darth Maul reveal leading into the incredible Dual of the Fates light saber battle. Here is the scene in question, because it slaps:

The fight scenes presented in "Night" are full of incredible choreography and references to the Darth Maul reveal. Maul's double-saber marks the first cinematic entry for non-traditional saber types, and captivated audiences immediately. As Jecki, an incredible duelist by the way, reveals the identity of the Sith Lord now called The Stranger, he pulls his saber handle apart to reveal a second shoto blade. Made famous via Ahsoka's fighting style, those who use the twin-blade fighting technique of Jar'Kai seem to have an additional level of Force awareness, or at the very least, have adapted to a skill that is not very popular during any era of the Jedi.

But The Stranger's reveal, combined with the brutal murder of Jecki in a way which seems to refute complaints about surviving saber wounds (recall Sabine Wren in Ahsoka's first episode), felt both evocative of the Maul reveal and completely new, devastatingly so.

I had to pause the episode, walk a few laps around my house, drink some water, vent to my lovely spouse who likes Star Wars but in a normal way, and sit down for a while before returning to the episode.

Come ON though...I am at once obsessed as a lifelong Star Wars fan, engaged with the continuation of medieval romance's queering potentials, all in for a discussion on authorizing power and educational systems, and also just incredibly gay for Manny Jacinto's biceps?

I am unwell.

And he wants an acolyte, not an apprentice. I think this is going to be vital to the last three episodes because:

Acolyte:
noun: one who assists a member of the clergy in a liturgical service by performing minor duties; one who attends or assists a leader: FOLLOWER

Follow the etymological path of acolyte back far enough and you'll arrive at kéleuthos, a Greek noun that means "path" and that is itself the parent of akólouthos, an adjective that means "following." Akólouthos traveled from Greek, leaving offspring in Medieval Latin and Anglo-French; its English descendant, acolyte, emerged in the 14th century. Originally, acolyte was exclusively a term for a person who assisted a priest at Mass, but by the 19th century, the word had acquired additional meanings, among them "attendant body, satellite" (a meaning used in astronomy) and "attendant insect" (a zoological sense), as well as the general meaning "assistant" or "sidekick."
-Merriam-Webster Online

There is a level of religious devotion to an acolyte vs. an apprentice, a faith, a belief. And since Mae has taken Osha's identity to go with Master Sol, Osha is left behind with The Stranger, alive because Osha reminded Sol killing is not the Jedi way. I'm just saying, I think we're about to get at least an episode of Osha thinking "but I can fix him," and, girl, same though.

And then you go see Manny Jacinto give an interview and he's such a cinnamon roll...