When Star Wars first arrived on the planet—again when it was simply the unique trilogy, mountains of toys, and one peculiar holiday special—followers knew the place issues stood. The Jedi had been the nice guys; Darth Vader and his buddies had been the baddies. However within the many years since, issues have gotten rather a lot murkier throughout either side of the Pressure.
Talking to C Magazine, Amandla Stenberg—soon to star in Star Wars series The Acolyte, created by Russian Doll’s Leslye Headland for Disney+—shared just a little bit about the place the present suits 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 High 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 by which conceptions across the Pressure are very strict. And I feel what we’re making an attempt 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 completely different views and solutions to that query. The concept is to sort of honor the ethos of Star Wars and concepts across the Pressure and likewise problem them, hopefully harmoniously.”
That dovetails with Headland’s personal statements, together with these she made last summer in an Entertainment Weekly piece teasing the show. “Star Wars is at all times about some model of the underdog versus the establishment. And I simply thought it was very attention-grabbing to do a present in regards to the dangerous guys and to set that in that point interval made probably the most sense. So it’s sort of nearly flipped,” she mentioned. “Now we have extra Jedi than you’ve seen in any of the of the Star Wars content material, however on the identical 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 Pressure in their very own approach, dipping into the darker sides of the Pressure 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 Pressure—and blurring the strains between the Gentle 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 Pressure, which takes place earlier than the occasions of The Phantom Menace however contains 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 attention-grabbing street for Star Wars to journey, and positively opens up alternatives for tales extra nuanced than clashes that will see completely different characters and settings concerned, however nonetheless really feel awfully acquainted. Although it isn’t but formally confirmed, online reports have tagged The Acolyte’s premiere date as June 5.
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