Spoilers ahead for the season-one finale of The Acolyte . “So many times I’ve watched mainstream media and just thought, Why can’t this female character be evil? ” says Leslye Headland, writer-director-creator of Disney+ Star Wars series The Acolyte . Sometimes, that character gets tempted but then nobly goes right back to being good.
In The Acolyte , however, she does not resist. Over the course of eight episodes, Amandla Stenberg’s Osha goes from failed Jedi trainee who couldn’t control her emotions to giving into those emotions and embracing the dark side. Along the way, she’s encouraged by her twin sister, Mae (also Stenberg), who is on a quest for revenge against the Jedi, and the mysterious Stranger ( Manny Jacinto , introduced in the guise of cover name “Qimir”), who trained Mae before turning his sights on Osha.
In the climax of the season finale , Osha channels all her repressed rage against her former master Sol (Lee Jung-Jae), killing him to avenge the murder of her mother, and bleeds the Kyber crystals of his lightsaber, turning it from blue to red. This moment, like much of the show, plays like a minor-key remix of many classic Star Wars themes and anxieties: the father-son reconciliation between Luke and Anakin in Return of the Jedi transposed into a father-daughter dynamic in which reconciliation does not come to pass. As in the prequels, the Jedi don’t come out of The Acolyte looking especially noble, while the Sith seem more reasonable tha.