Disney is no stranger to leaving fans disappointed when it comes to Star Wars, especially after the news that they scrapped the completed script that would have eventually become The Hunt for Ben Solo—a project that could have revived what was left of pro-sequel trilogy sentiment after the tragedy that was The Rise Of Skywalker. And it seems they might have dropped the ball again by keeping this new Knight’s Of Ren lore reveal from us.
In the finale of The Acolyte, Qimir (Manny Jacinto), also known as The Stranger, brought on Osha (Amandla Stenberg) as his apprentice. Darth Plagueis, Emperor Palpatine’s own master, was seen watching the pair from a distance—leaving the audience with more questions than answers. In the wake of the show’s cancellation, Leslye Headland, showrunner for The Acolyte, recently revealed that Qimir was meant to be our initial glimpse into the Star Wars franchise’s first Knight of Ren—not a Sith like audiences were originally led to believe. The Knights of Ren were a sort of Sith adjacent group introduced in the sequel trilogy, with their origins (and any real details about them) left vague and thoroughly not fleshed out.
What Would This Have Meant For The Acolyte?
Amandla Stenberg and Manny Jacinto in The Acolyte.
When asked by TVInsider about where the show could have gone, Jacinto said, “there were other things that we were kind of exploring as well in a possible Season 2 that, of course, didn’t come to fruition. But I would’ve loved to explore, obviously, the relationship with Osha more, but also Qimir’s relationship to Vernestra [Rwoh] more, and see what that dynamic was like.” He also elaborated a bit on the Knights Of Ren information, though wasn’t able to shed too much more light on it: “I did run into an article about, and I think Leslye cleared things up a little bit, that a possible path was that Qimir was one of the first Knights of Ren, so that was a possibility to explore.”
“I am always ready, and I would love to run it back if they’d have me. That was a role of a lifetime, and I’m incredibly proud of what we did in The Acolyte and with Oshamir, with that whole relationship,” he said about a potential return as Qimir. And when questions about the relationship between Qimir and Osha inevitably popped up, he didn’t hold back, saying, “I feel like with a lot of the franchises that we currently have, it’s missing the romance. It’s missing a lot of love and relationships. We have the big fight scenes and the origin stories of these heroes and whatnot, but they don’t really have a relationship with other people. It’s such a weird thing. And that’s why I loved the Qimir and Osha relationship, because we were taking it back to having a relationship in this big world. I think we just need more of that. I think that’s what made the characters and the story more compelling as opposed to just having big fight sequences, which I loved.”
The potential for a show like The Acolyte seemed boundless, and the fact that it was canceled is a real shame, seeming to do nothing but erode even more trust in Disney’s handling of the Star Wars IP.
Would you have liked to have seen Qimir as the first Knight Of Ren? Let us know in the comments below, and head over to the ComicBook forum to keep the conversation going.