Editor's note: The below interview contains spoilers for The Acolyte Episode 6.
The Big Picture
- Leslye Headland discusses the enemies-to-lovers dynamic between Osha and Qimir in The Acolyte .
- Headland appreciates fan creativity and support, and emphasizes her personal experiences in fandom.
- She also teases what's to come in the final two episodes of Season 2.
The Acolyte has finished what Rian Johnson started with The Last Jedi seven years ago by delivering some long-overdue enemies-to-lovers vibes via the tantalizing dynamic between Osha (Amandla Stenberg) and Qimir (Manny Jacinto). Following last night's ship-brewing episode, I caught up with the series' creator Leslye Headland this morning to unpack the ins and outs of everything that went down between Osha and Qimir, and where that dynamic might be headed.
Over the course of our lengthy conversation, Headland spoke about the ship's connections to Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) and Rey (Daisy Ridley), whether the Power of Two might be a Force Dyad, her intentions behind introducing this dynamic and how it plays with gender norms, how the Jedi of The Acolyte match up with the Jedi of the Prequel Trilogy, the surprising connections to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, whether the planet Qimir lives on is Ahch-To, and the intentional and thoughtful symbolism, allusions, and parallels at play throughout Episode 6. There was a lot to unpack, and we tried our best to hit all the most pressing questions that fans may have had once the credits rolled. Read on for the full transcript below.
The Acolyte
Sci-Fi
The Acolyte is a mystery-thriller that will take viewers into a galaxy of shadowy secrets and emerging dark-side powers in the final days of the High Republic era. A former Padawan reunites with her Jedi Master to investigate a series of crimes, but the forces they confront are more sinister than they ever anticipated.
COLLIDER: One year ago, I looked you in the eyes at Star Wars Celebration, and I asked you if we were getting enemies-to-lovers in The Acolyte, and look at us now. Who would have thought?
LESLYE HEADLAND: We made it. [Laughs] Somehow, we made it. I was terrified when you asked me that question because I'm not a great actor. I was like, “Just tell her no and move on.”
There was definitely panic in your eyes. “How does she know?” Luckily it wasn't recorded, it wasn't on video. It's only up here in my mind.
HEADLAND: Thank God.
But it's so great that we do get to see this dynamic. There is a little bit of a debate right now in the fandom about what name we're going to go with for the ship. There are two right now: it's Oshmir and then Oshamir. What's your take on that?
HEADLAND: I like Oshamir, personally. I like her full name.
How 'Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon' Influenced 'The Acolyte'
CloseSame. I'm quite a fan of that, as well. Aside from the obvious allusions to other ships, are there any other enemies-to-lovers dynamics that informed the decisions you were making as you were playing with these two characters?
HEADLAND: Oh, that's a good question.
There are so many.
HEADLAND: There are so many, but I am going to say no because I was really working from muscle memory. I didn't want it to quote something else. I wanted to just click into the kind of stuff that I wrote when I was in high school. I love these characters. Nobody wants to ship these characters more than I do. I love them so much. I love The Stranger. There's always a character that's an avatar for me that I really, really love. In Russian Doll, it was Charlie [Barnett’s] character, Alan.
The Stranger is obviously a badass, but I just mean much more than his character. I'm not going around doing fantastic lightsaber battles and murdering people and being an all-around badass, but I would say that what he talks about in this episode and what he talked about in [Episode] 5 is something I really dug down. Then Osha's inner conflict fits with his ideology, and yet they're on opposite ends of the spectrum just like she and her sister started at the beginning of the show. I wanted to stay true to my characters. I tried my best to just stick to the tropes and the stuff that I loved and tried not to think about, especially [with] the classics. I think it would have been a little too quotes-around-it if that were the case.
That being said, the relationship between Lo and Jen in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was an influence in the writer's room. We referenced that relationship over and over again. The intentional parallel is that they are equals and their relationship is earned through mutual vulnerability, not intimidation or manipulation.
You mentioned something there that is one of the reasons why I love The Acolyte so much, which is the way that Qimir has really picked apart who the Jedi are. It's such a fun response because the High Republic already kind of laid the groundwork for getting people prepared for thinking of the Jedi as not always the good guys. For you, as a fan of Star Wars, how much fun has it been to get to pick apart these ideas that have been baked into the franchise for so long and then flip the narrative a little bit and make people look at things from a very different point of view?
HEADLAND: I hope it's making people look at it from a different point of view. I can understand that fans — especially people who don't know the High Republic — may feel like I'm criticizing the Jedi as they exist in George Lucas' oeuvre, meaning the prequels and Episodes 5 through 6, but that's not the case. We're so much further back from that. We're in that era that Obi-Wan is talking about in A New Hope. We're in that period where the proliferation of power is so huge and far-reaching. Actually, in the next episode, you're gonna see how far-flung particular missions with Jedi are and the lack of oversight.
We get a little bit of a tease of that here in this episode with the whole thing with Rayencourt talking about doing this audit, essentially, of the Jedi Order, which I think is great. That's very true to where George Lucas was approaching things in the prequels, which is very political, very much a response to that kind of dynamic with the Jedi.
HEADLAND: Yeah, so comparing these Jedi to the Jedi in the prequels is a little difficult because it's 100-ish years. It's a century. So you see Vernestra’s like, “We cannot let this happen.” She gets more and more concerned about that at the end of the season, and rightfully so because she, as a very powerful Jedi Master, can sort of see what's on the horizon, whereas, when we meet the Jedi in the prequels, they're completely enmeshed at that point.
Going back to your question, one of the interesting ways to unpack the Jedi is, when they are at their height as they are here, what are the things they're doing differently? A Jedi doesn't pull their weapon unless prepared to kill — that's just a High Republic concept. They don't have battle droids, they don't have other people with lightsabers. There isn't any reason to pull it. Comparing that to anybody in the prequels, it's not the same. They're just not the same Jedi. So, in my opinion, and in my experience, and what I was interested in digging into is, it seems like it's a time where you can break down the Jedi as a concept, whereas I wouldn't want to touch what has been established of them a century later.
The Symbolism You're Seeing in 'The Acolyte' Is Intentional
CloseI obviously want to go back to the Osha and Qimir of it all.
HEADLAND: Did people freak out?
Oh my gosh. Everybody was losing their minds. There were so many people that were picking up on Reylo parallels between things that happened in The Last Jedi and what's happening here. Something that I was really struck by is the fact that, as much as it feels like a response to those dynamics, it also now informs Reylo because it is before, chronologically, in the timeline. So now it's such a beautiful, wibbly-wobbly, timey wimey vibe. How many of those parallels are intentional? How much of that is being informed by what we saw in The Last Jedi?
HEADLAND: There are two examples I’ll use. Honestly, with Kylo and Rey, there was really just one moment that was sort of the seed that planted the tree of this relationship. It was just Adam [Driver’s] delivery when he says, “Join me,” and then they cut to her and then he says, “Please,” in this incredibly vulnerable, almost heartbreaking way, where you understand how lonely and lost this guy is because he murdered his dad. You see it in his performance before the Leia moment in that movie, but it was specifically him standing in front of her and showing himself in such a vulnerable place.
I wouldn't say I took too much from the dynamics after that, because the second thing that was really important to me was that Osha never tried to turn him. I don't want to say I didn't like that dynamic, I just think it's a dynamic I wasn't interested in. Because a lot of ETL is like, “There’s good in you, blah, blah, blah.” I think when she sees him straight-up murder people, she's not like, “There's good in you!” [Laughs]
Right? “Hey, we can make each other worse!” [Laughs]
HEADLAND: So, in my opinion, Osha is extremely in denial about her own anger at the Jedi and at her father, i.e. Sol. She's in extreme denial about that because she feels like she's not allowed to be angry, and she's in an enormous amount of pain over her sister and their history, and she also feels like she's not allowed to feel that. So, someone coming in and saying, “Actually, feeling all those things is not only okay but actually could restore your spiritual foundation,” is almost too much. I don't think that's manipulation. I think he's telling her the truth. When he says “semantics,” I think he means it. He's just like, “Why wouldn't you use what is obviously the part of you that needs to be explored the most? Why wouldn't you lean into that? Why would you continue to suppress it for, really, no reason? The Jedi threw you away, so what are we still doing? What is this thing that you are thinking? You don't owe them anything. You owe yourself to start living your life and recognize your own strength in The Force.”
I loved how that was played out because I think it is an important aspect that hasn't necessarily been explored yet. We know people kind of wash out of the Jedi Order, but what does that mean for them when they're now coming to terms with the fact that they still have that power?
HEADLAND: Pablo Hidalgo and I talked about that a lot because, obviously, in Ahsoka we see that, but in live-action, we haven’t totally seen the process of what that would look like. But one thing Pablo and I talked about was turning in your saber — that there would be a ceremony around relinquishing your saber and that it would happen of your own free will. It wouldn't be taken from you, you would offer it up, and it would be a part of the ceremony of your leaving. So, I just loved the concept of him tapping into, again, this part of herself that is quote-unquote missing and saying, “How does it feel to hold one in your hand again?” Because that's a tactile way of saying, “Clearly, you miss it.”
That whole scene had so much fantastic symbolism in it. I look for symbolism and everything. It's a blessing, it's a curse.
HEADLAND: It's there, baby! [Laughs] Everybody's like, “There's no fire in space.” I'm like, “I'm glad you're looking at that because there are some themes in here that would upset you.”
I wanted to know if there was intentionality behind the costume choices in this scene, as well, because I noticed he comes to the pool and he's wearing his all-black attire, and when he leaves with her, he's wearing this beigey, very soft outfit. I was wondering if that was meant to evoke the imagery of the duality of The Force.
HEADLAND: 100%. And then she's wearing gray, she's wearing her sister's shoes. It's pretty, honestly, on the nose. But I think that when you have to execute the turn of the characters in half an hour and really explore the different sides of two people — her darker side, his lighter side — then a very quick, visual way to do that is to utilize the color theory and to have her in gray and him in white.
I love it whenever costumes inform what's happening on screen. My mom's a costumer, so I'm always looking at costumes and trying to find the symbolism behind them. Sometimes they’re like, “No, it was an accident. It just happened that way.” I’m like, “No!”
HEADLAND: No, no, no. There was a lot of planning around that. The witches being purple was a big one because purple doesn't show up too often in Star Wars. It does — it does a lot, but you don't see major characters. You think of Attack of the Clones, Zam Wessell wears purple, Palpatine wears purple. It's kind of an unknowing, like, what are people's alliances, and who are they? So, yeah, there was a lot of thought put into who was going to be what.
I also love that scene because, yes, it's unabashedly horny, you have a lot of bare flesh in Star Wars, which is so delightful, but that nudity then kind of brings a different layer to it because you're getting vulnerability, you're getting nothing to hide — all of these different themes. I’m curious, how far were you allowed to push things with how much skin was shown, and did you have to fight to be like, “No, this is heavy symbolism. This is helping to carry the story a lot?”
HEADLAND: Lucasfilm really believed in my vision. From a narrative perspective, it had to happen. It had to. He did, like, a Steven Seagal neck snap in the [previous] episode. How do you, at all, get from that to humanity? The only way to do that is to show him in such a wildly vulnerable position, and it has to be visual. I can't think of something more vulnerable than someone holding a lightsaber on someone who’s that exposed. I just don’t. I felt like he was so merciless in the previous episode that he had to stand in front of her and say, “You absolutely can kill me.” Essentially, “I'm at your mercy.” It couldn't feel like a put-on. It had to feel like he genuinely was like, “Totally. You can do this. There's nobody around.”
“No one’s gonna judge you for it.”
HEADLAND: “No one’s gonna judge you for it, so what’s up?” And again, it feeds in narratively to her decisions of still upholding this. He says, “You're wondering if it's honorable to kill me like this. You're still hanging on to the rules. You're still hanging on to this code.” Listen, part of it is just decency, and she's a good person, but I think he's also starting to teach her. He's also starting to go, “I deserve this.”
Which works so well. I think that also creates some of the best dynamics in storytelling. Speaking about costumes and symbolism, I love how this ship plays with gender norms. You have this flowy outfit that Qimir has on and Osha is a Mek. I see people starting to pick up on that a little because he's so femme-coded, and his clothes and the fact that he's cooking for her, and he's very soft-spoken. And then you have her wearing the pants and being like, "I'm gonna kill you. I'm gonna shank you."
HEADLAND: It's so wildly intentional that I don't know what to say.
Because it’s just there.
HEADLAND: It's so clear what's going on. So anybody that's picking up on it, congrats, awesome. But again, the dynamics had to be what they are after what he did in [Episode] 5. He cannot seem like an alpha male-y, intimidating — we know he's capable of that from 5 — but that cannot be his dynamic with her. It wouldn't make sense! We have to see this other side of him, and we have to see specifically the way he is with her. He never let Mae see his face, and he let her see him naked. You know what I mean? The character design was very, very intentional.
But also this is, again, this is the story of the bad guys. So unlike Rey and Kylo, where Rey is always in these lighter colors, and he's in black, then the Sith would be in white and the character, really, that's struggling with both sides would be wearing gray. It just seems like it had to be that way.
Is That Kylo Ren's Theme Intertwined With Qimir's?
CloseSomething else that I noticed, and a lot of other people were kind of questioning with that scene, as well, was the music. Like with the previous episode, we got The Knights of Ren, the Kylo Ren theme, and it also seems that the Kylo Ren theme is maybe interwoven into Qimir’s theme. How much of that was an actual, intentional decision and not just, “Well, it’s Sith Lord music?”
HEADLAND: It’s there. [Laughs] It sure is there, isn't it?
It is! Big fan of that because it is really some of the most fantastic music in this series.
HEADLAND: I'll say it's there. But I will also say that Michael Abels, I think, is a genius. He has a Pulitzer. I don't say that hyperbolically. I think he is a living genius. He did variations on a theme rather than totally lifting it and dropping it into the story because I don't think that would have worked.
It's just beautiful the way it's interwoven. It works so well.
HEADLAND: I love the cue for that scene. I agree.
I'm curious about a lot of little details. Osha's tattoo, is that a design choice that is meant to reflect her and Mae, or is there perhaps a deeper meaning that we’ll continue to see unfold?
HEADLAND: If I'm being honest, it was meant to really feel like a split-second decision. But the iconography of it was something that our graphics department, as well as my team of visual consultants that includes my sister, Inga [Headland], worked on. Again, with Star Wars, there's no easy decision. It had to feel almost stamp-like, like it had happened pretty quickly, but also, yes, I think, probably unconsciously, she's still split.
In this episode, Qimir says “a long time ago,” in reference to when he was training as a Padawan. Is that something we should be thinking about as we go forward?
HEADLAND: Yes.
Okay. I picked up on that. I was like, “Hmm. This isn't a red herring. I think this is something we should store for later.” [Laughs]
HEADLAND: You should store that for later.
There's something else that Qimir mentions in this episode, which is the Power of Two, which is obviously referencing the Master and apprentice hoo-hah that the Sith are big into. It did get a lot of people thinking about the Dyad because, again, that is a power of two that has been implemented into the Star Wars universe. Is that something that informed some of the decisions going forward with this dynamic?
HEADLAND: In my opinion, the Jedi wouldn't necessarily have that vocabulary right away. What I thought was interesting is that the Sith may be searching for something that would help them along with a larger quest and that Osha and Mae would possibly be a part of that. So, the power of two can mean a couple of different things. I would say primarily it means the relationship between two Sith. However, I think there's a secondary meaning that will be revealed later in the story.
Yes, I think the concept of a Force Dyad is very important to the story, even if it isn't necessarily name-checked, because I think that the Sith are much more aware of what a Dyad is, and I think the Jedi haven't figured that out yet in terms of how powerful that particular relationship between two Force-sensitive beings could be. There are many things in the High Republic that the Jedi would consider mythology or lack the language to describe, whereas the Sith know that they exist. I think the Sith are also tuned in to some aspects of The Force and ways to manipulate The Force that the Jedi are just not tuned into yet.
Which makes so much sense, too, because the Jedi are textbook Force users, whereas the Sith are like, “Whatever feels right. The vibes. Picking up on the vibes of The Force.”
HEADLAND: And I do think that the Sith, in their hiding right now, are basically trying to collect as many sources of power as they can because they don't have thousands upon thousands of members. And I do think the Witches of Brendok feed into that. They have an enormous amount of power, that coven.
Was That Planet Ahch-To?
CloseSo I know that it is the “unknown planet,” but it was definitely giving Ahch-To vibes.
HEADLAND: It's not Ahch-To. I know it's similar, and it was intentionally supposed to be similar in terms of terrain and feeling isolated and surrounded by water and less lush green and more rocky. But the idea is that cortosis is mined on this planet, so I don't think that's the case with Ahch-To. Part of the reason this is his home base is that cortosis is a very rare metal. I don't think we say it explicitly in the show, but that's a reason it's not Ahch-To.
Was it intentional to leave it as an unknown planet, because this is a planet that hasn't been discovered by the Jedi?
HEADLAND: That’s exactly right. It's an uncharted planet that they haven't [mapped].
Obviously, porgs were such a big thing on Ahch-To, and it definitely sold a lot of toys, and then we have these adorable, what I can only assume are these naked mole-rat-style creatures? [Laughs] I will say, after seeing them, I went to my Star Wars Wildlife book, I went to my George Lucas Monsters book. I was trying to figure out if we had ever seen these creatures before.
HEADLAND: Those are new. Those are all Neal Scanlan, and we wanted, we just wanted to have like…
Flora and fauna is so important in fleshing out [the world].
HEADLAND: Yeah, it just gave it a little character. We definitely wanted them to feel totally unthreatening. You didn't want to be like, "Those are rats!" You wanted them to kind of be cute rats, you know?
Yeah, the fact that the rats plays into what a certain fandom…
HEADLAND: Like my cute rat.
Reylos call themselves Rats, so they all have already co-opted that, and they're like, ‘These are ours. We are these cute little rats.’ So, unintentionally, perfect.
HEADLAND: Bless you, bless you all bless you.
I have to say one of the things that I woke up this morning, and I was thinking about how funny it is, time is a flat circle because, once again, we're in an election year where we have a Star Wars project that's giving us enemies to lovers. And we're also getting a show that's getting review bombed by bots and bad-faith people on the internet. And I'm curious, there's obviously a lot of people who are tuning in every week to actually watch this. They love this, they're creating things because they love this show so much. Are there conversations behind the scenes where people acknowledge that this is a movement to review-bomb on Rotten Tomatoes and [that] isn't actually indicative of what fans are actually thinking?
HEADLAND: Oh, yes. Everybody knows what review bombing is like. Truly when the show first came out, my publicist was like, "OK, with the review…" I was like, "Does anybody take that seriously anymore?" Perhaps the average… I understand the point of it, which is that the average viewer would look at the site and say, "Oh, the user review is really low." But I think that, if you're in the Star Wars fandom, I think you already know what review bombing is. So I guess if you're totally new to the fandom and you're considering watching the show, it could affect you. But I also think that my work in the past has been very word-of-mouth anyway, so I don't know if it… I think that because behind the scenes, we all know what it is — it's not that it's not concerning — but I think it's pretty expected. I would say.
I'm glad to know that it's at least expected these days, because people are people. But you really lucked out with the fanbase because you have the Reylos who gravitated toward this immediately as soon as the vibes were there and those are the ones that are creating fanfiction, and they're creating fanart, and they're very creative. And then you have the High Republic fans who will meme their way out of a tragic situation, which just brings so much joy. And I'm curious, for you as a creative, what is it like to see such a positive response from something you're creating that it's making other people want to create things of their own? For me personally, I've always thought [that] that is the hallmark of a good story, that it inspires you to want to create something within that kind of sandbox. But what has it been like to see the memes and the fanfics and the fanarts?
HEADLAND: I'm certainly amazed by it. Because that was my type of fandom in adolescence and early adulthood when the prequels were coming out, it was so, “create my own world based on the prompt of Star Wars media.” So the idea that I, first of all, getting to work in Star Wars is my dream, it is my career high. I don't know exactly what I'm gonna do after this. So being able to be a part of that and create Star Wars media and then have people doing what I did is very surreal and absolutely, like you said, it's a vote of confidence that this is fitting into the world that I love so much.
As we're winding down, I asked Twitter if they had any questions for you and overwhelmingly, over 100 people were like, "Just tell Leslye that we love her and we are thankful for the fact that she is the one helming the story and that it feels like people are being seen and recognized by the story."
HEADLAND: Oh, tell them thank you. Tweet it back, X-it back, I don't know what it is now. [Laughs] That's so wonderful to hear. I don't know. I think there's so much going on right now where there's this feeling that there's some Machiavellian grand scheme of injecting into the water supply some sort of... what's it called? Oh, agenda! And I honestly think it's more boring than that, which is, as somebody who has spent a lot of her experience not seeing my world reflected in mainstream media, I think I'm just adhering to the old adage of “Write what you know.” And I know Star Wars and I know my experience and I know what my community looks like, and so I'm just writing what's most personal to me, which is what I think all good Star Wars is, personal stories put into this beautiful world. So I think anything more than that is giving me too much credit. I really didn't think that much about it.
Hey, sometimes the best stories come from being like, "I just know this, it's just gonna work out."
HEADLAND: It's like the Stranger/Osha stuff, I didn't go to other fanfic or try to recreate something or attempt to create something I thought people would be interested in, you know? I definitely had some moments with The Stranger where I was terrified. I was like, "I don't know if people are going to…" Once the response happened, I was like, "Great, everyone's responding the way I did," to Manny's performance, to the intention of the character, to his personal ideology that I really relate with. Because, if you think about it, he's very much the counterculture character in the show. So I love that everybody's focused on everything else.
That's why I love villains, because the villains are usually the ones that see society on a completely different level than the good guys who are in the thick of it.
HEADLAND: Yeah! The scariest villains are the ones you agree with. Those are the scariest ones. To me, that's the scariest, because it forces you to create an opinion, which I think, listen, in this day and age, everyone's got one, and shouts it very loudly.
Yes. [Laughs]
HEADLAND: However, what I mean is it forces you to make an opinion within the story. It forces you to go, ‘I trust this guy, I don't trust this guy. I think that his intentions are X but actually, maybe I have to make the decision that they're Y.’ And then let the story kind of unfold and see whether or not that gets swayed, which is really The Stranger between [Episodes] 5 and 6. It had to be that way.
Yeah, people had to die.
HEADLAND: People had to die, and they were Jedi that saw Sith. So, at some point, they were going down, right? And then, if not now, then later.
I love his line that they threatened his existence. That is such a powerful line within the context of Star Wars, and just the larger story as well. The delivery was so fantastic.
HEADLAND: Oh, yeah, Manny is [so good].
So good. I think all of that will definitely break the internet. I think this whole interview might break the internet.
HEADLAND: It sounds like people are really getting into it.
The Acolyte is streaming now on Disney+, with new episodes releasing weekly each Tuesday.
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