Leslye Headland, director of the new “Star Wars” show “The Acolyte,” said she wanted to “challenge” the story about good guys vs villains, and said hers is a story about “power.”
Speaking to IGN about the upcoming Disney+ series “Star Wars: The Acolyte,” Headland said her Sith-focused series is very different from what fans have seen in shows like “The Mandalorian” and “Andor.”
Headland said her new “Star Wars” series looks “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,” she added. “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?” the director continued. “And we’ve never seen the good guys outnumber the bad guys to this extent. I guess that’s how it’s different.”
Headland said the Jedi we see in the trailer are reminiscent of the time of the prequel trilogy, the outlet noted.
“I think you’re seeing the Jedi when they are this very, very large institution – a benevolent one – but they are closer to who they are in the ‘Phantom Menace’ than obviously in the Original Trilogy where you feel like they’re almost extinct,” the director said.
“In a weird way, in the ‘Phantom Menace’ and the Prequel Trilogy, the Jedi outnumber the Sith,” she added. “And then in the Original Trilogy, the Empire outnumber the Jedi, which is why a show based on the ‘bad guys’ is interesting to me. In that era, what does the underdog look like? Even if they’re the bad guy.”
“But also, ‘The Clone War’s’ [inspired The Acolyte], a lot being inspired by Nightsisters,” Headland continued. “We don’t have any Nightsisters in this show, but being inspired by them, being inspired by Asajj Ventress…I definitely took some inspiration from that.”
According to StarWars.com, the Nightsisters — a “matriarchal society” that uses “dark magic” — “used the Force differently than the Sith, seeing themselves as able to tap its power without being consumed by it.”
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Headland said that throughout her series, she often wanted to reference things from “Clone Wars” or “Return of the Jedi” to the famed Cantina scene because she’s a longtime “Star Wars” fan herself.
“I think when you get an opportunity to do a ‘Star Wars’ and you’re a ‘Star Wars’ fan, the idea is to get in a lot of your wish list,” Headland said. “And hopefully other people are excited by it too.”
The new “Star Wars” series premieres on Disney+ on June 4.