“It’s the concept of the impossible,” says the actor from the Disney+ series
The truth has been revealed and of course, spoilerswe already know who the villain of ‘The Acolyte’ is, the current Star Wars series on Disney+. It was during the massacre of the fifth episode when we saw the face of Mae’s master (Amanda Stenberg).
And, as we already assumed, it is none other than Qimir, the associated smuggler embodied by Manny Jacinto and who is actually the Sith Lord known as The Stranger (translatable as The Unknown). A revelation that, in fact, the creator of the series, Leslye Headland, already assumed would not come as much of a surprise to us.
“I think a good twist is to telegraph what is going to happen”Headland confesses speaking to Entertainment Weekly, “And when it happens, you do it without an ounce of pity or sentimentality.”. And, for the screenwriter, the important thing was not that The Stranger was so-and-so, It was the trail of blood he left behind in his presentation official and everything that his presence provokes.
The drunken sith
And when creating the Sith in question, Headland was inspired by the Hong Kong martial arts film ‘Drink with me‘, whose central figure, the Drunken Cat, has every appearance of being nothing more than a clumsy alcohol lover but who turns out to be a powerful teacher shaolin. And with this aspect of half clumsiness, of an apparently unstable and unconventional person Manny Jacinto came to mind.
Jacinto, who did not have an audition and spent months training for the role, states that what they wanted to enhance most when creating the character was that when people saw him felt disturbed:
“We wanted a character that wasn’t just oppressive and powerful, but when you see him, you’re disturbed by him. We wanted a character that wasn’t just some Darth Vader-type character that eats up the screen. It’s the concept of the impossible. It can be a stumble in someone’s walk or a twitch in someone’s eye. It’s very subtle and it’s like this discomfort that people experience… and that’s what we wanted to focus on for this Sith Lord.”
Something that the helmet’s smile also contributes to, in Headland’s words:
«The helmet is not that different from the villain’s [clásico] from Star Wars. But the grimace is like this smile that lasts too long, and it must be really disturbing to the Jedi. It’s not that they fear him, it’s that they find him disturbing. Even his intro, when he floats down at the end of episode 4, we shot it backwards because we wanted the audience to be like, ‘What is this?'”
The episode ends with Qimir/Stranger tucking in Osha (with Kylo Ren’s musical motif) while saying a more than mysterious phrase: “What extraordinary beings we are. Even in revealing our triumph, we reveal our despair.”. A phrase that, without a doubt, predicted what was to come. This is what Jacinto says:
«I think it’s basically our introduction to the third act. It pretty much sums up everything you thought you knew in these first few episodes. Now we’re going into completely different territory. Now it’s a different world that we’re going to introduce you to and it’s not just a new story, new motivations for all the different characters.»
Evidently, They are not going to tell us details of what will happen.. They do hint that the sister swap goes far beyond the “physical.” The world of the two has fallen apart and now it’s time to see what to do with it… for better and for worse:
«The power dynamics and structures we’ve seen so far have been compromised in some ways, leading both characters to go on a completely different journey. Everything they’ve believed to be true has been challenged in some way. Now the question is, what will they do with that information?»
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