Lucasfilm has released the first trailer for a new live-action Star Wars series called “The Acolyte.” The series is set in an era before the Skywalker Saga, and will see what happens when “in an age of light, a darkness rises.”
The new trailer gives us a better look at the upcoming franchise, which arrives in…, and will take viewers to a time long before the events of the Star Wars films. While other series had a western or action-thriller approach to expanding the Skywalker saga, “The Acolyte” takes a different storytelling route. The new series is touted as a mystery-thriller that will take viewers into a galaxy of shadowy secrets and emerging dark-side powers in the final days of the High Republic era. In it, a former Padawan (Amandla Stenberg) reunites with Sol, her Jedi Master (Lee Jung-jae), to investigate a series of crimes, but the forces they confront are more sinister than they ever anticipated.
The trailer seems to hint at what that “darkness rises” may be alluding to. When Sol reminds his younglings that their eyes can deceive them and they can’t be trusted entirely. The trailer then cuts away to a cloaked figure walking through a crowd a people in a crowded market place. As the trailer cuts back to Sol, he asks the younglings to close their eyes and ask what comes to their mind. They give various responses ranging from life and balance. But the one who responds with fire is praticularly disturbing. And that’s when the action kicks in.
We see this cloaked figure attack another Jedi, played by Carrie Anne Moss. She is able to repel her assailant by using the Force.
The trailer then teases the mystery-thriller aspect when Yord (Charlie Barnett), another Jedi, says in a exasperated voice, “someone is killing Jedi, it doesn’t make sense.”
As with any Star Wars show or movie, audiences and fans will be taken to all kinds of worlds with different geographical figures, bustling cities, and people. What’s more, we will start to see the dark underworld where criminals and convicts sense a rising darkness. That’s when the trailer teases its biggest fight between the unnamed Padawan and Sol. Sol is able to stop her kick mid-air and parry it with the Force.
The same tagline, “In an Age of Light, A Darkness Rises” is then displayed. Along with an ominous warning. Aniseya (Jodie Turner-Smith) tells an unseen figure that “This isn’t about good or bad. This is about power and who is allowed to use it.”
The trailer then ends with a group of Jedi in a forest asking what threat they are about to encounter. That’s when a red lightsaber ignites and is hurled around and grazes the trees leaving heated cuts. This figure then uses the force to retrieve the lightsaber, to which the group of Jedi respond by igniting their own and charging in for an attack.
Manny Jacinto (“Nine Perfect Strangers”), Dafne Keen (“His Dark Materials”), Jodie Turner-Smith (“Queen & Slim”), Rebecca Henderson (“Inventing Anna”), Charlie Barnett (“Russian Doll”), Dean-Charles Chapman (“1917”) and Carrie-Anne Moss (“The Matrix”) also star.
A new poster is also revealing some details as what to expect. “In an age of light” tells us that there seems to be peace in the high republic, with the Jedi are the knights defending peace and propesrity in the galaxy. However, “a darkness rises” is more ominous as it foretells the Sith’s ascension from the shadows.
From creator, showrunner and executive producer Leslye Headland (“Russian Doll”), “The Acolyte” has begun production in the U.K. The executive producers are Kathleen Kennedy, Simon Emanuel, Jeff F. King and Jason Micallef. Rayne Roberts and Damian Anderson are producing. Headland will also direct the series pilot.
The first two episodes of “The Acolyte” debuts exclusively on Disney+ on June 4, 2024.
