This article contains brief spoilers for “The Acolyte.” The proper viewing order for the Star Wars franchise has been a source of contention among fans (and new parents) for decades. Do you watch everything in release order, starting with the originals, then the prequels and then the sequels? Or do you watch chronologically, starting with Anakin Skywalker’s downfall through Luke Skywalker’s hopeful defeat of the Empire and on to the most recent trilogy? Or perhaps a more exotic agenda, such as the “flashback order” that crams parts one, two and three in between parts five and six? However you do it, it’s about to get a bit more complicated thanks to “The Acolyte,” a new Star Wars television series that premieres on Disney Plus on Tuesday.
The hook? It takes place before anything we’ve seen in Star Wars live-action history. 1999′s “Star Wars: The Phantom Menace” is no longer the beginning of the story. “The Acolyte” is.
The eight-episode series centres on the hunt for an assassin who is creeping her way across a galaxy far, far away with the intention of murdering a specific set of Jedi. To make matters worse, this assassin might have ties to the Sith, the dark-side enthusiasts who have supposedly been dead for a millennium. The show is packed with the usual Star Wars tropes – lightsaber battles, bar fights, philosophical questions about the Force and even some Force-sensitive twins.
But it also shuffles the deck of what we know Star Wars to be..
