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‘The Acolyte’ showrunner confirms a legendary character just made his first appearance

It's one of the most important unseen Star Wars characters.

By Joe Allen Jul 19, 2024 11:31 AM

Amandla Stenberg in The Acolyte. — Disney

Warning: This post contains spoilers for the first season of The Acolyte.

The first season of The Acolyte has come to an end, and while opinion has been mixed on the season as a whole, there was certainly plenty to unpack in that finale, including some implications for the rest of Star Wars. The finale sees a memory-wiped Mae and Osha switching sides, with Osha agreeing to be taught by Manny Jacinto’s Qimir. While the plot had its own shocking moments, though, the surprises didn’t end there.

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As Qimir and Osha set off to confront Sol and Mae, we see a sinister figure lurking in the shadows of a nearby cave, watching the two of them depart. While we don’t hear his name in the episode, he matches the physical appearance (lanky, massive yellow eyes) that we’ve come to associate with Darth Plagueis, the Sith Lord who trained Palpatine and who supposedly learned how to master death.

In a new interview with Collider, show creator Leslye Headland has confirmed what many already suspected: that Darth Plagueis will be around for any future seasons of the show.

“I thought it was important that he be in the cave because, you know, the call’s coming from inside the house,” she explained. “He’s already there in a very intrusive way. So, that was the thought around that. But yeah, baby, Plagueis.”

We didn’t learn whether Qimir is aware of Plagueis’s presence or not, and Headland would neither confirm nor deny that. What seems clear, though, is that Plagueis was always part of Headland’s plans for the future of The Acolyte.

Joe Allen is a freelance writer at Digital Trends, where he covers Movies and TV. He frequently writes streaming… Read Full Bio

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Since Daniel Craig bit the big one in his James Bond swan song in 2021’s No Time to Die, fans have been waiting to find out who the next person to drink the martini shaken instead of stirred will be. In true Bond fandom fashion, a whole slew of fancasts have started to muddle the waters as to who could possibly be the new 007. Callum Turner, Jacob Elordi, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, and more have all been pitched as possible replacements. Some more ethnically diverse options like Henry Golding and Rene Jean-Page have also emerged. But, alas, no word has come down from on high to give us the scratch to this fan itch raging on for the last five years. That is, until Producer Amy Pascal sat down during her Spider-Man: Brand New Day press tour and gave a bit of insight on when we can expect an announcement, and also what we can expect in the cast.

I would say the end of the year is a good bet. We are being really, really methodical. – Amy Pascal

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Earlier this year, I was strolling the streets of New York and ended up sitting in the Carnegie Club with an Old Fashioned in one hand and a cigar in the other while My Way by Frank Sinatra played from a speaker flanking leather-bound books behind the couch I had been using as my perch. It was my first cigar, but it led to a slight obsession that recently found me on the back deck of a lodge in Kenya, staring at Mount Kilimanjaro and smoking a stick while giraffes meandered by. Admittedly, there has been no intention in my budding hobby; I am aimlessly choosing the cigars that look good (the ones that look like those smoked by Arnold or Stallone in the movies, obviously). But I have decided to approach these in a new way, with a little help from my friends over at La Aurora, who graciously decided to navigate my ignorance with some info compiled by Brand Manager John Gaglio, with input from Master Blender Manuel Ynoa, CEO Ed McKenna, and Brand Manager Elvis Batista.

What to look for in your first cigar

FIFA’s Gianni Infantino Is Uglifying the Beautiful Game With $20 Billion Plot — But the Global Soccer Community’s Punching Back

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For the better part of two decades, perhaps even more, corruption has allegedly run rampant within FIFA. Sepp Blatter, in particular, became the face of alleged extortion schemes, and he operated with impunity while at the helm of the organization for 17 years, from 1998 until his forced resignation in 2015 amid an FBI corruption probe. He’s banned for life from all football-related FIFA activities. If you’re new to the organization’s alleged deep connection to corruption, Netflix offers a brilliant 2022 documentary, FIFA Uncovered. In that documentary, Gianni Infantino appears in his previous capacity as Secretary General of UEFA (2009-2016) and later as the newly elected FIFA president, who vowed to root out corruption and hand the beautiful game back to the people where it belongs.

That, as it turns out, was all wishful thinking.