In further confirmation that Disney and Lucasfilm aim to continue the current media trend of portraying any and all villains as sympathetic and misunderstood, The Acolyte lead Amandla Stenberg has affirmed that the upcoming Star Wars series will center on exploring “what it means to be on the Light side or the Dark side” of the Force.
Stenberg provided this tease of The Acolyte‘s narrative during a recent interview given to Empire Magazine in promotion of the series’ upcoming premiere.
Asked by the outlet’s Ben Travis if she could recall how showrunner and former Harvey Weinstein assistant Leslye Headland’s had pitched the series to her, the actress began, “The show was actually pitched to me in visual form. I had a meeting with Leslye and [Lucasfilm creative executive] Rayne Roberts. We sat down for some brunch, and they opened up this iPad with concept art that had been conceptualised – with me in it.”
“Even at that point, details were being held from me, so I was extrapolating what I could based off off the images,” she added. “But I understood that it was an exploration of the light and dark parts of ourselves, and the rules in the galaxy around how the Force can be used. Which was insane, to experience that.”
To this end, Travis later noted that not only did he feel that “The Acolyte really seems to get into the light side, dark side dynamic”, but also that her character, Mae, leaned “more towards the dark side”.
In response to his speculation, Stenberg asserted, “I think it’s a lot more complicated than that, which is the point of the show.”
“Hopefully,” she concluded, “if we did our job right, the show makes it an interesting interrogation into what it means to be on the light side or the dark side.”
As note above, Stenberg’s interview is not the first time a member of The Acolyte‘s production crew has spoken to the series’ ‘morally grey’ approach to the Force.
Speaking with StarWars.com in March, the aforementioned Headland detailed, “If Star Wars is about the underdog versus the institution, [in The Acolyte] the Jedi are the institution.”
“I was so interested in a storyline where the Jedi were at the height of their power — and I don’t mean The Phantom Menace, because at that point, there’s a Sith Lord in the Senate that they’re not picking up on,” she continued. “[In the show, I wanted the Sith to be] a thing I’ve heard of, but it’s not a thing that you would ever consider you’d be interacting with.”
To this end, Headland then asserted that the fundamental question at the core of the series’ story was “What went wrong?And if the bad guys are actually the underdog, it just seemed like a cool reversal.”
Further, Stenberg herself previously hinted towards this narrative direction, recapping the series’ premise to C Magazine in February. “In the context of the Star Wars universe, it’s a time of great peace, theoretically.”
“It’s also a time of an institution, and it’s a time in which conceptions around the Force are very strict,” said the actress, “And I think what we’re trying to explore within our show is when an institution has a singular conception of how power can be used…we try to provide a lot of different perspectives and answers to that question. The idea is to kind of honor the ethos of Star Wars and ideas around the Force and also challenge them, hopefully harmoniously.”
At current, the House of Mouse’s next attempt at subverting the Star Wars mythos is set to ‘force-fu’ its way onto Disney Plus on June 4th.