Culture | TV So we’re back in a galaxy far far away (again) with the sixth spin-off show of the Disney + Star Wars era. The Acolyte, comes with a great cast – from His Dark Materials star Dafne Keen to The Hunger Games’ Amandla Stenberg , and Lee Jung-jae, who stole the show as the lead in Squid Game. Plus, there’s the iconic Carrie-Anne Moss, who has graduated from the Matrix to using the Force as Jedi Master Indara.
But the record for Star Wars spin off shows has been mixed: for each Mandalorian and Andor , there is a Book of Boba Fett and Ahsoka . So where does this one sit? The answer, frustratingly, is probably somewhere in the middle. The Acolyte plunges viewers back in time when the Galactic Empire was but a twinkle in Emperor Palpatine’s eye: 100 years before its beginnings.
The Jedi reign supreme, but because it would be boring to live in a utopia, the Sith are still there, just training in the shadows, waiting for their moment to strike. Into this powder keg steps Osha (Stenberg), a former Jedi who has turned from the path and now makes a living as a ship’s mechanic. You can tell she’s a goodie because she has the requisite cute droid, in this case named Pip.
Osha just wants a quiet life but trouble comes knocking when she’s arrested for the murder of a prominent Jedi. Of course, it’s not her, but is in fact her evil twin Mae (also played by Stenberg), from whom she was separated as a child and who has turned to the Dark Side to seek revenge for so.