When Star Wars first arrived on the planet—again when it was simply the unique trilogy, mountains of toys, and one peculiar vacation particular—followers knew the place issues stood. The Jedi have been the great guys; Darth Vader and his friends have been the baddies. However within the many years since, issues have gotten loads murkier throughout either side of the Power.
Talking to C Journal, Amandla Stenberg—quickly to star in Star Wars sequence The Acolyte, created by Russian Doll’s Leslye Headland for Disney+—shared slightly bit about the place the present matches into not simply Star Wars’ timeline, however its ever-evolving perspective on its core ideas.
“Within the context of the Star Wars universe, it’s a time of nice peace, theoretically,” Stenberg mentioned, referring to the Excessive Republic—an period a number of generations previous to the occasions of The Phantom Menace. “It’s additionally a time of an establishment, and it’s a time through which conceptions across the Power are very strict. And I believe what we’re attempting to discover inside our present is when an establishment has a singular conception of how energy can be utilized … we attempt to present a whole lot of totally different views and solutions to that query. The concept is to sort of honor the ethos of Star Wars and concepts across the Power and in addition problem them, hopefully harmoniously.”
That dovetails with Headland’s personal statements, together with these she made final summer time in an Leisure Weekly piece teasing the present. “Star Wars is at all times about some model of the underdog versus the establishment. And I simply thought it was very fascinating to do a present concerning the dangerous guys and to set that in that point interval made essentially the most sense. So it’s sort of virtually flipped,” she mentioned. “We now have extra Jedi than you’ve seen in any of the of the Star Wars content material, however on the similar time, you see extra morally ambiguous characters than you’ve seen in different Star Wars content material.”
Noting that The Acolyte is “from the attitude of the villains of Star Wars,” Headland described the present’s characters as “people who find themselves utilizing the Power in their very own manner, dipping into the darker sides of the Power and are doing it with out being sanctioned by the bigger establishment, which, on this case, is the Jedi.”
Difficult long-held concepts across the Power—and blurring the traces between the Mild and Darkish sides—is a comparatively new path in Star Wars media, and it’s extending past simply The Acolyte. In the present day, StarWars.com shared an excerpt from John Jackson Miller’s upcoming novel Star Wars: The Dwelling Power, which takes place earlier than the occasions of The Phantom Menace however consists of a few of its characters, together with Jedi Masters Qui-Gon Jinn and Mace Windu. It examines “the Jedi Order at a crossroads” because the group considers its place within the galaxy—and whether or not it’s time to rethink how they deal with their enterprise.
It’s an fascinating street for Star Wars to journey, and positively opens up alternatives for tales extra nuanced than clashes which will see totally different characters and settings concerned, however nonetheless really feel awfully acquainted. Although it’s not but formally confirmed, on-line reviews have tagged The Acolyte’s premiere date as June 5.
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