By George & Josh Bate
Nearly two years after its premiere and subsequent cancelation, The Acolyte continues to make headlines in the Star Wars community.
With The Art of The Acolyte by Kristin Baver publishing on February 3, fans of the divisive Disney+ series will soon feast on tons of incredible concept and a number of unexpected reveals. One of these reveals relates to Manny Jacinto’s The Stranger (aka Qimir), a character that, despite the array of responses to The Acolyte, is universally praised.
The Art of The Acolyte reveals that The Stranger’s disturbing, smiling mask was designed to evoke Kylo Ren’s helmet from the sequel trilogy. Creature artist Nick Tyrell describes, “The slight frill at the back of the helmet – a design element that dates back to the franchise’s samurai influence and notably first seen in Vader’s design – hints at a link between the Stranger and the Star Wars sequel trilogy’s masked antagonist Kylo Ren, an idea storytellers took from the design.”
The Acolyte creator Leslye Headland elaborated that the link between Kylo Ren and The Stranger is more than just aesthetic. “It felt like it foreshadowed a possible connection to the Knights of Ren with the Kylo Ren shape we landed on,” Headland states. “We just started to go in that direction. It was in the design of the character, as well as knowing that we were going to introduce Darth Plagueis, who has to end up with Palpatine as his apprentice. Following the Rule of Two – a precept that limited the Sith to just two at any given time, a master and an apprentice – one way to keep it going is if the Stranger is the first knight of Ren, part of a Sith-adjacent culture that we know eventually survives.”
Headland went on to confirm that composer Michael Abels’ addition of Kylo Ren’s music cues from the sequel trilogy in The Acolyte were intentional. “And since we never name him,” Headland continues, “you don’t know: Does he have a first name and then his last name is Ren? Is he the original Ren? It’s a good way to nod to it without having to give away too much information.”
What does this all mean? Well, it confirms that, despite what certain sects of the Star Wars fandom would have you believe, Leslye Headland knows Star Wars inside and out. She realized that the Rule of Two stipulated there only be one Sith apprentice and one Sith master, as Yoda so iconically stated at the end of The Phantom Menace. This inevitably raised the question: Does The Stranger’s existence contradict The Rule of Two. The Art of The Acolyte confirms it does not as The Stranger would have gone on to create the Knights of Ren, a collective of dark side users distinct from the Sith. In doing so, Headland simultaneously established an origin story for the mysterious Knights of Ren and reconciled The Stranger’s appearance around a time when Darth Plagueis and Darth Sidious were working together.
This latter point is particularly interesting as it provides added context to Plagueis’ appearance on the island Bal’demnic in The Acolyte finale. Canon has already confirmed Plagueis took on The Stranger as his apprentice, but him spying on The Stranger’s growing bond with Osha Aniseya implies he began to grow distrusting of The Stranger. After this new reveal from The Art of The Acolyte, it’s possible that Plagueis lurked on the island as a means to confirm his suspicions – that The Stranger planned on betraying him by seeking an apprentice of his own, thus breaking the Rule of Two. If we carry this logic forward, it implies that The Stranger would formally split from Plagueis at some point before forming the Knights of Ren, after which point his fate is unclear. Upon the split, Plagueis likely claimed Palpatine as his new apprentice after The Stranger had betrayed him by aligning with Osha and starting the Knights of Ren.
The Art of The Acolyte is on sale on February 3, 2026.
