‘The Acolyte’ Showrunner Leslye Headland Says Critics Who Take Issue With Anakin Skywalker Origin Retcon Are “Paying Attention To The Wrong Aspect” Of The Story
The Acolyte showrunner Leslye Headland says she has “mixed feelings” regarding the fan backlash to her retconning of Anakin Skywalker’s origin.
As confirmed in the third episode of the latest Disney Star Wars disaster, rather than Anakin Skywalker being the first ever living creature to be conceived directly by The Force, that honor now belongs to series protagonists Mae and Osha, both of whom were brought to life hundreds of years before the Chosen One via their mother Aniseya’s magical manipulation of said universal energy.
In other words, rather than being the product of a miraculous event meant to signal his importance to the universe, Anakin’s existence is now canonically just another instance of an admittedly rare but still previously seen phenomena.
Unsurprisingly, this retcon prompted a wave of backlash from long time Star Wars fans, many of whom considered it to be yet another instance of Disney attempting to run roughshod on George Lucas’ original vision.
However, according to Headland, said backlash is not only misplaced, but is based on a complete misunderstanding of her writing.
The Acolyte showrunner broached the topic of her Anakin-related retcon during a a post-Episode 7 interview with The Nerdist‘s Michael Walsh.
Pressed by Walsh as to why, as revealed in the episode, Mae and Osha being two-halves of one consciousness would “make them stronger and not weaker”, Headland asserted, “I think it’s both. The girls are guinea pigs. They’re patient zero for this sort of power. It didn’t work perfectly. Therefore the girls on their own can never be as powerful as Anakin. Their full potential together has yet to be explored. They’ve been separated too long.”
RELATED: Nielsen Data Shows ‘The Acolyte’ Had Second-Worst Premiere Ratings Of Any Disney Star Wars Series
“It’s like when you’re doing an experiment and it’s the first round of it,” she said. “They are maybe not the first, but one of the first experiments of this particular use of power.”
Continuing, Headland admitted, “So the twins are weaker than Anakin, for sure. They are going to fall short of what will eventually become the Chosen One. They will never achieve what that is, because in my mind, Aniseya could only do so much. She’s not powerful enough to create one person.”
“The twins split, Aniseya’s power split, and therefore a lot of her philosophy is about the power of two,” said Headland. “About the fact that they must stay together. They must stay together. The twins are stronger together if she keeps them together. And obviously there’s an analogy to this of the isolationist feeling, not just of the coven, but also of family. ‘If I can keep you safe, if I can keep you safe then you won’t get hurt. You won’t get hurt.'”
From there deviating into other discussions regarding the events of the series’ latest episode, an inquiry from Walsh regarding “What aspect of the series that will prove important in the finale do you think people haven’t focused on enough up to this point?” would eventually return Headland to the topic of Anakin’s birth.
“That’s a good question,” replied the showrunner. “I haven’t been following the coverage of the show enough to really answer that. I did hear that there was a bit of a dust up in terms of the girls stepping on Anakin’s creation storyline, which I had mixed feelings about.”
“It’s probably for another deep dive to kind of talk about that,” she told Walsh. “I would say that you might be missing the forest for the trees in starting an argument about that, instead of seeing that this is a power that could have existed in the world way before Anakin. And that power was being pursued by someone. So it’s not an issue of ‘paying attention to,’ but I did hear about that, and I just think people aren’t taking into account the era that we’re in.”
Further defending her creative choice, Headland added, “If there’s anything we know about the fifth in Sith in sequels or prequels, one of the things we do know about them is their quest for these abilities like we’re seeing Aniseya being able to execute with the twins.”
“It just seemed to me any power like that that does not belong to one faction,” explained the former assistant to Harvey Weinstein. “It is not something that Aniseya was born with either. It’s a power that belongs to the Force. And that it’s up to the practitioner to be able to understand and figure out and pull apart how do you harness that particular power.”
Drawing her thoughts on the topic to a close, Headland opined, “I understand what people were complaining about, or were maybe confused by, but I think they’re sort of paying attention to the wrong aspect of it.”
“They’re not seeing the long game of the lineage of the Sith pursuing any sort of evidence of this type of power in the galaxy and then tunnel visioning toward it,” she concluded. “And improving upon it. Again, if the girls are a test run, being able to improve on what that power is and being able to perfect it, that would be something if I were a Sith I would be interested in.”
The eighth and final episode of The Acolyte is its way onto Disney Plus on July 16th.
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