The Acolyte review: A thrilling show that breathes new life into Star Wars tropes

Close to fifty years in, how do you tell a story set in the live-action Star Wars universe that feels novel enough to keep both lifelong fans satiated and new viewers entertained? Over the last few years, Lucasfilm has toyed with different answers to that question. The Mandalorian, Ahsoka, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and Andor have found, to varying degrees of success, that nostalgia can only take you so far. Why play in this IP sandbox if not to reframe what’s come before and reshape what’s yet to happen?

With The Acolyte, which premieres June 4 on Disney+, writer-director Leslye Headland (Russian Doll) has crafted an intriguing entry into this decades-spanning franchise that thrills precisely for the way it repurposes well-worn Star Wars tropes all while threading a brand-new tale anchored by a slew of fresh characters. On its surface, Headland thrusts into a Jedi noir tale: Master Sol (Lee Jung-jae) along with his Padawan Jecki Lon (Dafne Keen) and young Jedi Knight Yord Fandar (Charlie Barnett) are tasked with solving a case involving the rare murder of a Jedi master. Yet the more Sol and these Jedi investigate what and who is behind this killing (and the threat of more deaths to come), they uncover a history Sol thought he and his brethren had buried long ago.

From its very first scene, The Acolyte is intent on cheekily nudging to long-storied images and set pieces from Stars Wars of yore. We’re in a cantina and a mysterious, robed character arrives in search of a Jedi master whom she intends to fight. She’s laughed at and mocked on sight. Battling any Jedi is a fool’s errand, especially since our mysterious figure refuses to wield a weapon. The Jedi are trained to never partake in such combat. But soon, and without a weapon to show, the robed figure causes enough of a ruckus to merit the impatience if not ire of the Jedi at hand whose physical appearance and fight-like reflexes will have you thinking of The Matrix’s Trinity. But such winking casting is helping in setting the scene: Carrie-Anne Moss would play the kind of Jedi you’d never want to be up against. The fight that ensues—not to mention the glint of recognition Master Indara voices when she realizes who’s come to hurt her—is enough to pique audience interest. The Jedi won’t face the threat of the Sith for another hundred years. So who could be trying to settle scores with them so many generations before the Skywalker saga is set in motion?

That’s the question that drives Master Sol, who finds himself embroiled in this entire affair when he learns a former Padawan of his may have been involved. Again, there’s no way to hear of such a premise without it echoing the intertwined fates of, say, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker, or, later still, of Luke Skywalker and Kylo Ren. The vexed relationship between mentor and mentee, between Master and Padawan, is as old as Star Wars itself, and such twinned stories have long been fertile ground for the series. But in Headland’s hands, such a connection feels less like a capitulation to only ever telling one kind of Star Wars story and more like a sense that such cyclical tragedies are inherent in spaces where youth and its attendant obstinance are treated with unwavering hostility.

The Jedi order depends on a strict kind of obedience. Theirs is a community built on the removal of individuality for the sake of the whole. It’s why feelings and attachments are so looked down upon. As The Acolyte unspools its intricately woven storyline around who’s behind these mysterious Jedi murders and what they have to do with a confrontation between several Jedi and an order of a different kind many years before, Headland and her cast and crew create competing and complementary ways of examining what that kind of obedience (to fate, to the Force, to family) can do to folks who feel hamstrung by such demands. That’s what Amandla Stenberg, arguably the lead of the show, is called to play. On screen, the Hate U Give actor offers viewers plenty of textured examples of what it means to try to pave a path for yourself against those who wish to trace it for you.

And really, once The Acolyte begins broadening its mythology, with awe-inspiring flashbacks (and by episode four, a shocking cliffhanger of a reveal), you have to admit that even as it toys with familiar beats (betrayal! revenge!) and expected characterizations (there may only be one way to play a weathered old Jedi Master), this latest Star Wars series has big ambitions in bridging the franchise into a whole new world—and, perhaps, attract a new audience in the process. After all, you don’t cast the likes of Barnett (the sexiest Jedi since Ewan McGregor?), Manny Jacinto (a charming former smuggler who lights up the screen whenever he shows up), and Jodie Turner-Smith (a witchy mother figure who’s as transfixing as you’d imagine) to merely play into just well-known franchise types.

What perhaps makes The Acolyte such an engaging and addictive watch (over the first four episodes screened for critics, at least) is its commitment to not treating the Jedi (or the Star Wars franchise writ large) as untouchable. If anything, Sol, Indara, and the like become figures through which the series pokes holes at the revered Jedi Order in a way that feels necessary if you’re to think of this world as an ethically ambiguous morass where everyone is trying to do their best and finding, in due time, that, yes, even Jedi are fallible.

The Acolyte premieres June 4 on Disney+