‘The Acolyte’: Leslye Headland, Amandla Stenberg, and More Dive Deep Into All the Twists of Episode Five
Disclaimer up front: If you have not seen the fifth episode of The Acolyte, you might want to check it out before scrolling down. In the following article, we’ll be covering the cast and crew’s breakdown of everything that happened in “Night”, so if you want a spoiler-free experience, you might want to tune out here.
For the rest of our readers, you might be familiar with how the fifth episode flipped the table and pulled several twists out of nowhere, including killing off most of the Jedi characters, except for Master Sol. (Did we predict this with a late-Tuesday poll or did we not?) Entertainment Weekly published on Wednesday morning a tell-all piece in which they sat down with showrunner Leslye Headland and stars Manny Jacinto, Dafne Keen, Joonas Suotamo, Amandla Stenberg, and more.
They confirmed that the mysterious dark side Force user, now revealed to be played by Manny Jacinto, is referred to as the Stranger. Headland acknowledged that this wasn’t a huge twist and that the audience had probably figured it out by now. That’s why she wanted to have a lot more reveals up her sleeve, including the death of some of the major characters — which she, along with writers Kor Adana and Cameron Squires, deliberately planned to happen after killing off the more “expendable” characters, i.e., ones we hadn’t spent any time with. Headland said:
“I think a good twist is not about hiding everything from the audience and then throwing it on them like, ‘Hey, this is what you didn’t see! We hid it so well that you didn’t see this!’ I think a good twist is telegraphing what’s going to happen, and then once it does, executing it without an ounce of pity or sentimentality.
That’s what I loved about starting with the red shirts,” she explains while momentarily slipping into Star Trek parlance. “You’re kind of like, ‘Oh, he’s just going to kill a bunch of red shirts, and everybody is going to be fine and… OH MY GOD, JECKI’S DEAD! Okay, I’m listening.'”
Headland also noted that she got carte blanche when writing and staging the deaths, some of which were pretty brutal:
“I just figured someone would stop me and nobody did. I figured someone would say, ‘This is too far!’ But they didn’t.”
Dafne Keen weighed in on the decision to off most of the main characters, and how unconventional that is for a high budget TV series (Game of Thrones aside):
“There are so many directors in blockbuster sagas that are so scared to kill off their characters, and are so comfortable with bringing characters back to life, and all of these little writer tricks that I think are quite cheeky. And I really like that she was actually killing people. Because if you’re not making it dangerous, then why are we even here? Why are we concerned by the story? Why do we care? Leslye has such a backbone as a writer, to make you fall in love with these characters and then slaughter them all like pigs and be like, ‘Yeah, this is our villain. We’re not just saying he’s so big and scary, we’re actually showing you how big and scary he is.'”
The Acolyte lead, Amandla Stenberg, explained how this felt like a point of no return for the series:
“There was definitely this energy on set that we were reaching some kind of climax and heading towards a different future. We were losing our cast members that we love so much, and I definitely felt like, ‘Oh, now it’s time for me to go on a more solemn journey,’ which kind of reflects the characters too.”
Keen also added how this is what pushed her over the top to take the job:
“Honestly, that’s what really sold me. That was the first thing she said to me in our meeting. She was like, ‘You might be playing an alien, and you die pretty early on,’ and I was like, ‘I’m in! I love playing dead!'”
Charlie Burnett, who plays Yord, also put it in his own words:
“No one ever wants to be cut out of a show. But when you’re playing a character that you know is going to die, it’s a little more fun. If it’s a surprise to you and your job is gone next week, it sucks. But when you know what you’re walking into, you get to have a little more control over it. And I tried to find the lemonade through the lemons.”
Headland explained how it was the Hulu series Nine Perfect Strangers that made her offer Manny Jacinto the job on The Acolyte, no audition required:
“I watched Nine Perfect Strangers during the pandemic, and when he first came on screen, I was like, ‘Who is that guy? How do I know him?’ And then I was like, ‘Oh my God, that’s Manny Jacinto! What the f—?’ So seeing that dichotomy of him being able to do two ends of the spectrum, I felt a lot of confidence in him.”
Jacinto had four months of training leading up to filming the action sequences of the fifth episode, he revealed:
“I had almost four months to train for that flight scene. This was the first time I really got to dig into something with so much action and really make use of my dance background. We worked on everything. We did boxing, we worked on kicks, we worked on all the choreography. It was tough. They conditioned my body so that I could get through this five-person fight scene.”
It was Jacinto under that mask almost the entire time, and as Stenberg explained, he was over the moon about it:
“He had been waiting for this moment the whole shoot. Manny put in so much preparation, he completely transformed physically. He became incredibly skilled at lightsaber work. He put in months of prep in the time that he wasn’t filming his other character. So I just felt so happy for him, that he was able to demonstrate everything he had been working towards.”
Jacinto also explained how his character was meant to feel different from the traditional Sith Lord, how he was supposed to give off the wrong vibes:
“We wanted a character that was not just oppressive and powerful, but when you see him, you feel disturbed by him. We wanted a character that isn’t just a Darth Vader type of guy who overpowers the screen. It’s the concept of the uncanny. It can be a stumble in a person’s walk or a twitch in somebody’s eye. It’s very subtle, and it’s just like this uncomfortableness that people experience — and that’s what we wanted to hone in on for this Sith Lord.”
The actor also went on to give some additional background to the last line of the episode, “What extraordinary beings we are. Even in the revelation of our triumph, we see the depth of our despair.” He said:
“I think it’s essentially our introduction into the third act. It’s basically summing up everything that you thought you knew in these first episodes. Now we’re going into completely different territory. Now it’s a different world that we’re going to introduce you to, and not just a new story, but new motivations for all of the different characters.”
The final moments of the episode set up three more episodes of The Acolyte of which we know very little. Stenberg teased the empty canvas laid out for the remaining of the season:
“The power dynamics and structures that we’ve seen so far have now kind of been invested, which sets up both of the characters to go on a completely different journey. Everything that they both have believed to be true has been challenged in some way. And so now the question is: What do they do with that information?”
Mae is now working hand-in-hand with the last person on her kill list, but her mission has changed slightly. She now wants to prove to Osha that the Jedi are not what she thinks, as Leslye Headland explained:
“Mae says, ‘They’ve brainwashed you.’ Part of her mission is not just to finish her kill list. Now that her sister’s alive, part of her mission is to prove how the Jedi, and especially Sol, are not what not who Osha thinks they are.”
Similarly, “Osha is going to want to hear some of the things that the Stranger has to say,” as Jacinto put it. Headland also said that one of the core relationships in the show is the father-daughter link between Osha and Sol. The former still has a lot to learn about what really happened on Brendok, whereas the latter has been haunted by it for years. Headland said:
“Our story is the father-daughter dynamic with Sol and Osha, and that’s a very different dynamic than father-son. So you’re going to see us explore that and get into that relationship even more deeply than the first half of the season, which focused more on sister-sister.”
Season 1 will have a definitive ending, as Headland threw everything she had at it, but there are still “four or five mysteries” she’d like to explore, should a second season be picked up. She said:
“Something that I’ve noticed is first seasons will end on what should have been the break into act two. It feels like everyone’s really expecting [their shows] to get a second season, and I don’t feel that’s a good idea. I threw everything into season 1, because who knows what’s going to happen?”
Well, we’ll find out a bit more of what’s going to happen next week, when the sixth episode of The Acolyte debuts on Disney Plus. In the meantime, check out Josh’s spoiler discussion of the fifth episode here, and read the full Entertainment Weekly interview here. SWNN Live! will also return on Thursday night to discuss all things episode 5.
Miguel Fernández is a Spanish student that has movies as his second passion in life. His favorite movie of all time is The Lord of the Rings, but he is also a huge Star Wars fan. However, fantasy movies are not his only cup of tea, as movies from Scorsese, Fincher, Kubrick or Hitchcock have been an obsession for him since he started to understand the language of filmmaking. He is that guy who will watch a black and white movie, just because it is in black and white.
