It’s been over a year since Lucasfilm decided they would not renew The Acolyte for a second season, yet Manny Jacinto is still hopeful some of the storylines left open will continue in some form, even if he’s no longer actively lobbying for a renewal.
TV Insider recently chatted with the actor about the show, asking whether Jacinto was reinvigorated by the recent fan uprising after Adam Driver revealed the failed plans for a Ben Solo movie set after The Rise of Skywalker. Though he’s still crossing fingers when asked, when talking about the show he’s mostly reflective rather than actively pushing for a renewal — even if he’d still jump at the opportunity to come back:
“I am always ready, and I would love to run it back if they’d have me. That was a role of a lifetime, and I’m incredibly proud of what we did in The Acolyte and with Oshamir, with that whole relationship.”
For him, it was the romantic angle that mostly interested him about potentially returning:
“I feel like with a lot of the franchises that we currently have, it’s missing the romance. It’s missing a lot of love and relationships. We have the big fight scenes and the origin stories of these heroes and whatnot, but they don’t really have a relationship with other people. It’s such a weird thing. And that’s why I loved the Qimir and Osha relationship, because we were taking it back to having a relationship in this big world. I think we just need more of that. I think that’s what made the characters and the story more compelling as opposed to just having big fight sequences, which I loved.”
The Stranger (Manny Jacinto) in Lucasfilm’s THE ACOLYTE, season one, exclusively on Disney+. ©2024 Lucasfilm Ltd. & TM. All Rights Reserved.
On top of all of that, a quote from Leslye Headland in The Art of Star Wars: The Acolyte resurfaced this week, in which she said the following:
“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 cult that we know eventually survives.”
Though the book doesn’t come out until January, the page from which the quote was extracted has been available since Star Wars Celebration, in April. Jacinto saw the same reports going around, and said the following:
“I did run into an article about, and I think Leslye cleared things up a little bit, that a possible path was that Qimir was one of the first Knights of Ren, so that was a possibility to explore.”
The Stranger (Manny Jacinto) in Lucasfilm’s THE ACOLYTE, season one, exclusively on Disney+. ©2024 Lucasfilm Ltd. & TM. All Rights Reserved.
And it wasn’t the end, of course. We also learned in the first season of the show that Qimir’s former master was Vernestra Rwoh, but we didn’t really see that subplot fully explored. He said:
“I think there would’ve been maybe more of a Master-Padawan relationship with the both of them, but who knows? I don’t know if we’ll ever see it.”
Though The Acolyte is not returning, Jacinto is still actively participating in the fandom. He had a significant presence at this past April’s Star Wars Celebration, and will likely keep engaging with the fans in various events and conventions over the next few years.
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.