The ecosystem of upcoming Star Wars movies and TV shows is about to reach farther back than it’s ever gone before. With showrunner Leslye Headland’s new Disney+ series The Acolyte dropping its first trailer, we’ve now seen what’s known as the High Republic era come to life.
Set about a century prior to The Phantom Menace, this series brings some different expectations when it comes to concepts like the Sith. Which was the right time for Headland to use a rather fitting Jurassic Park analogy to describe just how the legendary practitioners of the Dark Side of the Force appear.
While speaking with StarWars.com in honor of launching The Acolyte’s big reel of footage, Leslye described some pretty important ways that her series would be different from anything we’ve ever seen. With the analogy of how modern-day people would perceive a wild Velociraptor in play, here’s how Ms. Headland laid out the Sith’s place in the High Republic:
Like it's a thing I've heard of, but it's not a thing that you would ever consider you'd be interacting with.
If there was ever a species that deserved to be aligned with the Sith, it’d have to be velociraptors. While Sith don’t exactly hunt in packs, as there are only supposed to be two at any given time, their capacity for camouflage and sneak attacks are similar to tactics employed by one of Jurassic Park’s most dangerous species.
The Acolyte’s distance away from the Skywalker Saga era of Star Wars is shown in even greater context through Leslye Headland’s further remarks on the matter. Highlighting a very fundamental story beat that’s a deep-fried franchise tradition, the novelty of the Sith plays even better when shown through the following lens:
If Star Wars is about the underdog versus the institution, [in The Acolyte] the Jedi are the institution. I was so interested in a storyline where the Jedi were at the height of their power — and I don't mean The Phantom Menace, because at that point, there's a Sith Lord in the Senate that they're not picking up on. … What went wrong? And if the bad guys are actually the underdog, it just seemed like a cool reversal.
Previously, Leslye Headland set expectations for The Acolyte in a very similar way. She wanted to "do a show about the bad guys," and that message has come out loud and clear in the new trailer. At the same time, setting the Sith up as the underdogs is something that's both required, but also clever, when it comes to building out this well-worn saga.
We know The Acolyte pins this story 100 years before Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace, meaning it shows the beginning of the end, that’s a lot of time to watch the Sith grow in power and strength. Since we already know that they eventually attack not from the front, but from the sides, that’s going to make for an interesting influence on the overall watching experience fans could expect from this decidedly darker-looking corner of the saga.
To see if this Jurassic Park comparison tracks, the two-episode premiere of The Acolyte will hit the 2024 TV schedule on June 4th. So if you need a reminder to re-up your Disney+ subscription, consider yourself called out. Think of it this way: if you really want to revisit The Phantom Menace, and don't feel like heading to theaters for the 25th anniversary re-release on May 3rd, you've got another option of convenience!
