Every Star Wars Mystery And Plot Thread The Acolyte Never Resolved

"Star Wars: The Acolyte" premiered on Disney+ earlier this year to critical acclaim and a surprising amount of backlash — even before the show started. With bots review-bombing it on Rotten Tomatoes, racist social attacks being leveled against the main cast, and YouTube grifters decrying the show as "woke" before it aired, there was always going to be an uphill battle for the show spearheaded by Leslye Headland of "Russian Doll" fame.

Set almost 100 years before the events of "The Phantom Menace" and around 100 years after the events of the most recent events in "The High Republic" era of "Star Wars" publishing, "The Acolyte" is a murder mystery of sorts. Jedi are being killed, and as the layers of this deadly plot are peeled back, a tale of the Sith is revealed alongside the beginning of the decay of the Jedi. As the show continued, more and more fans were impressed by the slow burn of the show, not to mention the impressive lightsaber duels and the appearance of a certain Sith lord never before seen in live action.

Since the show's first season finale had been no news of second season, though fans who watched the show had been clamoring for news a renewal after the cliffhanger ending. Unfortunately, Deadline has reported that Lucasfilm has opted not to move forward on developing a second season for now, leaving fans with a lot of dangling threads to be concerned about. 

That's not to say Lucasfilm can't pick it up for development at a later date or develop these storylines in other media, but its certainly disappointing. "The Acolyte" was a breath of fresh air and it's sad to see folks who didn't watch it or were incapable of seeing the quality of storytelling it left us with are taking a victory lap as though this is somehow good for fans of good, diverse "Star Wars" storytelling. There are so many dangling threads the show left us with, and we've got a deep dive into the biggest cliffhangers and questions it left unresolved.

One of the single largest reveals in the final minutes of the final episode of "The Acolyte" was Darth Plagueis hiding in the background, secretly pulling strings behind everything. Plagueis was first mentioned in "Revenge of the Sith" and was the master of Darth Sidious/Emperor Palpatine. It was he who had an interest in midi-chlorians and the building blocks of life. Sidious even hinted (falsely) that Plagueis may have had a hand in creating Anakin Skywalker.

Since "The Acolyte" is set 87 years prior to the events of "The Phantom Menace," there is a lot of story to be told to bridge us between this moment, where his apprentice is The Stranger (Manny Jacinto) took Osha (Amandla Stenberg) as an Acolyte, as well as the period in which he takes Darth Sidious as his apprentice. During the prequel trilogy, we were privy to the problems Darth Sidious had keeping his apprentices alive, watching Darth Maul get sliced in half and Darth Tyranus (Count Dooku) lose his head before Sidious finally settled on Darth Vader. More seasons of "The Acolyte" promised to take us further down this road with Plagueis and his apprentices, as well as his research into cheating death.

These are some of the largest mysteries in the entire Skywalker Saga, and "The Acolyte" had become a perfect vehicle to explore them.

The Stranger, introduced first as Qimir, turned out to be the apprentice of none other than Darth Plagueis. We learned over the course of the show that he was a Jedi, previously a padawan of none other to none Vernestra Rwoh (Rebecca Henderson). The Stranger had taken the dark path of the Sith and found an acolyte in Osha to train in the ways of the dark side. Where did he come from? Where did he get his Cortosis mask? How did Darth Plagueis find him, and what will his ultimate fate be since he is not Plagueis' final apprentice?

When we met his character, there was a certain charisma to his double life, and fans lost their mind when he was revealed to be the stranger in later episodes, murdering Jedi with abandon in the forest. But what drove him away from the Jedi, and why are we so sympathetic to his views about the Sith and the dark side? More than anything, how does his apprenticeship and conflict with his own master end? We know that Plagueis will eventually take Palpatine as his apprentice, but he won't born until after the next 20 or 30 years on the timeline. How do we get from here to there?

With the show looking as though it's not coming back for another season, where would we get answers to these questions about his character?

Vernestra Rwoh was the only legacy character who made the leap from "The High Republic" publishing initiative to the live-action world of "The Acolyte." A brand new Jedi Knight, young and full of hope and optimism in the books, by the time "The Acolyte" rolls around, she has become jaded and willing to make compromises in ways that very much raised the eyebrows of fans who were familiar with her character.

With each passing episode of the show, we learned more and more about her, and by the end, we received two shocking revelations. The first was that Qimir was her padawan during his time as a Jedi. This opens a flood of storytelling possibilities that would fit the flashback structure of the show for future seasons, and it also makes us wonder about the darkness that plagues Vernestra. The other major revelation is how willing she is to lie in order to protect the Jedi Order. It doesn't seem very Jedi-like, and there will likely be consequences — albeit personal ones — to bearing the burden of those lies. Without a second season, we might never see what those consequences will be.

In the very last shot of "The Acolyte", Vernestra Rwoh comes to the diminutive and familiar Master Yoda to talk to him about what has transpired. Yoda is old enough to have been around for all of the events of the show. He also witnessed the decay of the Jedi and their end.

How much was Yoda involved in the cover up? Was he aware of it at all? Would he have guided Vernestra Rwoh into fixing the problem? Or did he obscure the problem further? The underlying mystery of "The Acolyte" is tangentially related to Anakin Skywalker, who would be born in about 80 years. "The Acolyte," in future seasons could have helped given Yoda more context to understand how he was dealing with the prophecy and what he was looking at with the vergance in the Force. Exactly what Vernestra was going to talk to him about — truth or lies — was a massive mystery left with the audience at the end of "The Acolyte," and it's not quite fair to leave the audience to struggle with.

Another major element to consider for Yoda is Vern's visions of the future. The Skywalkers essentially destroy the Jedi and throw the galaxy into upheaval because of the visions of the future they see. Yoda counsels them against this. Vern also sees visions of the future in her hyperspace travels. Could this have been where Yoda began to learn to distrust those feelings in the Force and the reason he began to counsel the Skywalkers to ignore those visions, even though they ignored him? This is merely another loose end.

Mae (also played by Amandla Stenberg), Osha's twin sister, has had her memory taken and doesn't even remember the crimes she's being blamed for by the Jedi. It's convenient for Vernestra Rwoh, as she makes this part of her plan to scapegoat Master Sol (Lee Jung-jae) for the murders of the Jedi, as well as hold Mae accountable for her part in the plot.

Mae wants to hold the Jedi and the Republic accountable, but her lack of memory doesn't allow for that. Will she gain it back and have her memories unlocked — much like Luke is able to unlock Grogu's memories of training in "The Book of Boba Fett," or are they gone forever? This could have far-reaching consequences, and it's another dangling threat for the future of the story here. But what sentence would the Republic have meted out to Mae? This would have surely been revealed in a second season and could have had a negative effect that cascading down Vernestra's story of lies.

One of the final shots of "The Acolyte" shows us the Stranger and Osha hand in hand, ready to take embrace the dark side together. Osha has already taken her first steps into the darkness, murdering Master Sol with a brutal Force choke, but she lacks the training she needs to truly be a Sith acolyte. How would that training work, especially with Darth Plagueis in the picture?

The closest we've seen to a Sith training regimen in "Star Wars" in moving pictures would be Count Dooku's training of Savage Opress in "The Clone Wars" and that was more of a montage in an episode than an actual, in-depth study. "The Acolyte" leaves us with a promise of that training, which would have allowed us a deeper window into what drives people toward the dark side, but also what drove Osha and Qimir toward it as well. This unexplored territory is, perhaps, one of the largest dangling threads left by a lack of continuation of "The Acolyte."

And beyond Osha's training, what of her promise to find her sister again? Could Osha have undone the damage to Mae's memory and start that ball rolling?

The single largest promise in the subtext of this show was the driving mystery of the creation of Osha and Mae. It was implied that they were somehow cloned, right down to the midi-chlorians inside their bodies. Their mothers argued about how much trouble they would be in if the Jedi knew how the girls were begotten, and they were both killed before they could reveal the secret to the Jedi or the audience.

With Osha in the thrall of the Sith, Darth Plagueis is almost certain to use her as part of his experiments on midi-chlorians, which are the basis of the story of "Darth Plagueis the Wise" that Palpatine relates to Anakin at the Opera on Coruscant in "Revenge of the Sith." It's no wonder Plagueis would tolerate his apprentice taking an apprentice with that sort of information locked in her cells.

How does this all make a logical connection to Anakin Skywalker? There's a step missing in the story that connects the two that further seasons of "The Acolyte" would have bridged, making a continuance of this show all the more important. The entire underlying mystery of this show offered more clues about the nature of Anakin's birth, and it remains an even larger mystery now. Cutting the show off before it answers more of that question means we may never know more. And that's a shame.

Unless Lucasfilm decides to greenlight a second season of "The Acolyte" after fan outcry, which doesn't seem likely at this point (but never say never), all of these dangling story threads and mysteries could very easily be drawn into animation and "The High Republic" publishing program. Leslye Headland is a visionary director working in television, and bringing her unique talents to "Star Wars" was a gift that should be cherished, even if we don't get anything beyond the eight episodes we received. It's my hope that the story threads that she brought to the table don't simply die on the vine, and we're able to get more from them.

There is a fascinating story in there for a second season that follows Qimir as both master and apprentice, trained by Vernestra in flashbacks and training Osha in the present. There are answers to be had about the decay of the Jedi and the trauma endured by Vernestra herself. There are many facets to be explored, if only Lucasfilm would have the courage to let them be.

In this moment, with the future of Darth Plagueis's story hanging in the balance, I almost feel like Anakin Skywalker after Palpatine asked if he'd ever heard the tale and Anakin tells him no. "I thought not," Palpatine says. "It's not a story the Jedi would tell you."

Now it seems the rest of "The Acolyte" is not a story Lucasfilm will tell us either. But the point of the Skywalker Saga is to have hope, so that's what we'll cling to in the meantime.