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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.

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
Joe Allen is a freelance culture writer based in upstate New York. His work has been published in The Washington Post, The…
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