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 have been the nice guys; Darth Vader and his friends have been the baddies. However within the a long time since, issues have gotten quite a bit murkier throughout each side of the Drive.
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 a bit of 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 stated, 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 wherein conceptions across the Drive are very strict. And I feel 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 loads 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 Drive and in addition 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 all the time about some model of the underdog versus the establishment. And I simply thought it was very attention-grabbing to do a present concerning the unhealthy guys and to set that in that point interval made essentially the most sense. So it’s sort of nearly flipped,” she stated. “We now 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 angle of the villains of Star Wars,” Headland described the present’s characters as “people who find themselves utilizing the Drive in their very own means, dipping into the darker sides of the Drive 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 Drive—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. Right now, StarWars.com shared an excerpt from John Jackson Miller’s upcoming novel Star Wars: The Dwelling Drive, 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 attention-grabbing highway for Star Wars to journey, and definitely 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’s not but formally confirmed, online reports have tagged The Acolyte’s premiere date as June 5.
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