Star Wars: The Acolyte: Exclusive First Clip Is a Battle Between a Jedi Master and His Former Padawan
Lee Jung-jae and Amandla Stenberg lead the ensemble cast of the Disney+ series.
IGN is excited to debut the very first clip from Star Wars: The Acolyte, which launches its first two episodes on Disney+ on June 4. You can watch the exclusive clip via the player above or the embed below.
In this gripping fight scene, Jedi Master Sol (Lee Jung-jae) squares off against Mae (Amandla Stenberg), a dangerous warrior from his past. Sol is investigating the shocking murders of multiple Jedi, but as more clues emerge he discovers that all is not what it seems.
The Acolyte is set between the High Republic era and the prequels, roughly 100 years before the events of The Phantom Menace. Acolyte creator-showrunner Leslye Headland, who also directed the first two episodes, spoke with IGN at Star Wars Celebration 2023 about the importance of this timeframe.
“When doing a Star Wars show that was going to be from the perspective of who we usually see as the villains, it made sense to set it during a time period where the Jedi were in power,” Headland said. “That meant that it was a time of peace.”
Headland pitched The Acolyte to Lucasfilm as “Frozen meets Kill Bill” and drew particular inspiration from The Clone Wars episode
The Wrong Jedi. She has said The Acolyte will “question the status quo” of the Star Wars galaxy.
At the time the show’s first trailer launched in March, Headland told IGN, “We’re looking at the Jedi as an institution, as a concept, as an entity that has amassed a lot of power. And that’s good, I’m not saying that’s wrong. But I do think that when Jodie Turner-Smith has that line at the end of the trailer, when she says, It’s not about good or bad, this is about power and who’s allowed to use it,’ really I think that’s the question we’re asking. That’s really the question. It’s not, ‘Is somebody good, is somebody bad?’ There’s an imbalance. Someone might be imbalanced morally, but if there’s a power imbalance, how does that affect the power of Star Wars? And we’ve never seen the good guys outnumber the bad guys to this extent. I guess that’s how it’s different.”
Stenberg echoed this sentiment at Star Wars Celebration 2023, telling IGN: “What I love about Star Wars is how it delves into the complicated effects of power. And so we get to do that now, but within a point in the timeline that hasn’t been explored before, which is the High Republic era, and so that’s when the Jedi are at the height of their power. And so Leslye, I think extremely cleverly, has decided to tell a story about an assemblage of characters who are dealing with their own morality within the context of this particular point in society. And so my character is someone who is really struggling with those things.”
In addition to Amandla Stenberg and Lee Jung-jae, The Acolyte stars Manny Jacinto, Dafne Keen, Charlie Barnett, Jodie Turner-Smith, Rebecca Henderson, Dean-Charles Chapman, Joonas Suotamo, and Carrie-Anne Moss.
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Along with Leslye Headland, executive producers include Kathleen Kennedy, Simon Emanuel, Jeff F. King and Jason Micallef. Charmaine DeGraté and Kor Adana are the co-executive producers. Rayne Roberts, Damian Anderson, Eileen Shim and Rob Bredow are the producers.
The show’s directors are Kogonada (Eps. 103 & 107), Alex Garcia Lopez (Eps. 104 & 105) and Hanelle Culpepper (Eps. 106 & 108). Michael Abels composed the score.
For more Star Wars coverage, watch the remastered Phantom Menace trailer, get your first look at the main cast of The Skeleton Crew, and find out how to play the canon Star Wars games in order.
