To set the stage for this humble review of the new Star Wars series The Acolyte, please imagine this scrolling up the screen:
100 years before a punk kid named Anakin Skywalker said “yippee,” a galaxy far far away is in a place of relative peace — in part thanks to the Jedi, a faithful order of lightsaber-wielding badasses with a lot of power and more than a few secrets.
One of those bigger secrets is on the verge of being revealed, thanks to a mysterious assassin out for revenge: Caught up in that assassin’s quest is a young woman named Osha (Amandla Stenberg), who once trained as a Jedi but flunked out of Jedi school at the age of 18. Six years later, she’s working as a space mechanic when a shocking death on the other side of the universe brings trouble to her door, and she’s forced to not only face her past, but figure out her real place in the universe…
While the new Disney+ series might technically be a prequel, thanks to its time setting The Acolyte is deliciously unburdened from the problems that most prequels face. Unlike Obi-Wan Kenobi, a show where we literally knew how everyone would eventually die, this series is free to tell its own story, featuring a new ensemble of fascinating characters tackling a murder mystery with potentially galactic implications.
And, based on the first four episodes provided to critics, it does this while still managing to feel like Star Wars, thanks to the lived-in details of its various remote settings, the impressive action sequences, and the exploration of universal themes like power and corruption and loyalty and betrayal. Someone even says “I have a bad feeling about this!” The only thing that makes it stand out from past Star Wars stories is that it has a lot of women in it, actively participating in the story. (What a concept.)
The Acolyte comes from creator Leslye Headland (Russian Doll), marking the first Star Wars adventure made for the screen that’s fully the creation of an actual woman — significant because up until about 10 years ago, the only women to have any real behind-the-camera impact on Star Wars were the iconic Leigh Brackett co-writing The Empire Strikes Back, and the ghost-writing Carrie Fisher did over the years.
The last few years in particular have featured numerous women making in-roads when it comes to telling stories in this universe: Beyond Kathleen Kennedy now serving as president of Lucasfilm, animated series including the Tales shorts and Star Wars Resistance have featured female writers, with Jennifer Corbett serving as the head writer for The Bad Batch. Plus, directors including Deborah Chow, Susanna White, Bryce Dallas Howard have helmed episodes of The Mandalorian, The Book of Boba Fett, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and Andor.