Star Wars: The Acolyte Might Actually Solve A Sequel Trilogy Mystery
Spoilers are the path to the dark side, so beware: this article discusses major events from the latest episode of "Star Wars: The Acolyte."
What a difference a week makes. After last week's episode of "Star Wars: The Acolyte" left fans hanging over the edge of a serious cliffhanger (though not before inspiring a wave of online controversy stemming from a harmless cameo), episode 5 made good on that implicit promise and delivered all the action and mayhem we'd been waiting for. Deep-cut lore references were made, multiple heroes tragically sacrificed their lives (RIP Yord, everyone's favorite stickler for the Jedi rules), and villains were finally unmasked ... namely, the mysterious dark side master whom viewers have taken to calling "Darth Teeth." The twist that Manny Jacinto's Qimir had actually been Mae's (Amandla Stenberg) Sith master all along may not have been the biggest shocker in the franchise's history — many had guessed as much when Qimir went missing in episode 4, just in time for Darth Teeth to appear — but it certainly lined up with all the clues laid out previously and gave us the only fitting answer for the man inside the toothy mask.
But while episode 5 (simply titled "Night," following last week's thematically linked "Day") provided plenty of food for thought amid its visceral lightsaber battles and shocking plot turns, one easy-to-miss Easter egg buried in the sound mix of the episode might prove to be the biggest hint yet at what "Acolyte" has in store for us during the rest of the season to come. Late in the episode, Qimir's sinister approach to an unconscious Osha was accompanied by a very familiar-sounding musical theme.
HOLD UP....
Was that Kylo's theme playing?! #TheAcolyte pic.twitter.com/LlFcJCgp9O
— Vader's Order (@VadersOrder) June 26, 2024
As was pointed out on Twitter, that brief cue was none other than Kylo Ren's main theme from the sequel trilogy.
Is The Acolyte hinting at a Knights of Ren connection?
Somehow, the Knights of Ren returned. Okay, so "The Acolyte" hasn't officially confirmed that about Darth Teeth, but the evidence thus far is pretty compelling. After director J.J. Abrams first introduced the gang with a couple of stray references culminating in Rey's Force vision in "The Force Awakens," fans never saw the Knights again until they randomly appeared once more in "The Rise of Skywalker" ... and were unceremoniously killed off without any further explanation whatsoever. (Honestly, I preferred director Rian Johnson's approach in "The Last Jedi" of simply pretending those weirdo edgelords didn't exist at all.) The mystery of exactly who those Knights were and what their purpose was has remained a hanging thread ever since, but perhaps the ultimate answer will come in the most unexpected place imaginable.
The main setting of "The Acolyte," taking place 100 years before the prequels in the midst of the High Republic era, seemed as if it would prevent any overt connections to more contemporary "Star Wars" movies and shows, but perhaps we were too quick to assume. Granted, the briefest of music cues isn't exactly a wealth of information to go on, but creator/showrunner Leslye Headland and her creative team wouldn't have thrown in such an overt and recognizable theme for no reason. On the surface, the parallels between the Knights of Ren and Qimir are plain to see. His chosen outfit certainly matches what we've seen of Kylo Ren's groupies, while his refusal to play by the "rules" (as Charlie Barnett's Jedi Yord puts it to Osha at one point) similarly hints at the same reckless grasp of the Force that Kylo Ren displayed time and again.
Now, the question is what this could mean moving forward.
What this could mean for the rest of The Acolyte season 1
If Qimir's dark side Force-user really does have something to do with the Knights of Ren, it's possible that he's meant to function as an origin story. What if he's meant to be a sort of precursor to the mysterious order of the Knights of Ren, a newly-created subset of dark side Force wielders that established a prototype for what the villainous Snoke (Andy Serkis) would later take advantage of during the events of the sequel films? Remember, Adam Driver's Kylo Ren/Ben Solo wasn't ever affiliated with the actual Sith himself, and neither does Qimir seem eager to embrace that label. (He notably says, "I have no name, but the Jedi like you might call me Sith," as if he didn't choose that for himself and is merely using language that Lee Jung-jae's Master Sol would recognize.) Supposedly, the Sith ought to have vanished for a millennia prior to the events of "The Phantom Menace," but this little loophole could provide a way for both facts to be true at the same time. Technically, Ki-Adi-Mundi's belief that the Sith have vanished could line up with QImir's presence if he himself doesn't fully identify as a proper Sith.
More broadly, future episodes could provide more backstory and more details regarding Qimir's exact worldview and motivations for enacting vengeance upon the Jedi — key information that may finally give us insight into what the Knights of Ren were all about in the first place. Whatever dreadful thing Sol is hinted to have done in the past will undoubtedly factor into this, but we'll have to wait and see how this ultimately plays out.
New episode of "The Acolyte" stream on Disney+ every Tuesday at 9pm EST.