Seeing red: Inside “The Acolyte”'s shocking bloodbath and big villain reveal

Series creator Leslye Headland and stars Manny Jacinto, Amandla Stenberg, Dafne Keen, Charlie Barnett, Lee Jung-jae, and Joonas Suotamo break down episode 5.

Warning: This Entertainment Weekly cover story contains spoilers for episode 5 of The Acolyte.

Manny Jacinto has been keeping a big secret. But there's just one problem: "I'm the worst liar," he says in between sips of an almost comically oversized water bottle. However, the time has finally arrived for Jacinto to come clean, and the sudden explosion of truth-telling is positively intoxicating, no matter what is actually in that bottle.

"I've been lying to people for the last two years — to their faces," he confesses. "Some of them, they straight up call me out and they're like, 'I don't trust what you're saying.' Some of them believe me. But I've been lying, and it gives me a lot of anxiety, having to lie to people."

The root of the aforementioned deception and cause of Jacinto's pants being constantly on fire for the past two years centers around his true role on Disney+'s The Acolyte. But the June 25 episode has freed the actor up to finally embrace something his character certainly has not: pure honesty.

"I mean, right now I'm tingling," he says, smiling. "Just because this is the first time that I'm actually able to talk about it."

Talk about what? The fact that his previously established part of shady apothecary Qimir was all a ruse and that he is actually a Sith Lord known only as the Stranger? That the dude just brutally murdered multiple Jedi, including a Force-using Wookiee and two other main characters in a deadly blur of ultraviolence? That his hair could still look so on point even after wearing a creepy helmet straight out of a horror movie?

Because fans are talking about all that and more after feasting their eyes on the biggest action spectacular in streaming Star Wars history. Clocking in at 32 minutes, episode 5 of The Acolyte was the series' own Fury Road: essentially one nonstop fight scene from beginning to end. During the melee, the mysterious, red-blade-wielding master of Jedi assassin Mae (Amandla Stenberg) was finally unmasked as Jacinto's Qimir — an unmasking that came right as he was cruelly striking down Jedi Padawan Jecki Lon (Dafne Keen), and shortly before he way-too-casually snapped the neck of Jedi Knight Yord Fandar (Charlie Barnett). The episode then concluded with Mae knocking out her twin Osha (also played by Stenberg) and deceptively assuming her place alongside Osha's former Master Sol (Lee Jung-jae), leaving her sister to be found by the Stranger and completely resetting all the pieces on the game board with only three episodes left.

To paraphrase the renowned poet LL Cool J, that is a lot of destruction and terror and mayhem for a single episode, a fact that show creator Leslye Headland reveals made some folks behind the scenes a wee bit nervous. "I got some feedback when we were writing and prepping the episode that said, 'Gosh, it's just so much fighting. Don't you think the audience will tune out at some point?'" laughs Headland. "And I said, 'No, I feel really confident that they're going to love this.'"

The installment was the culmination of what can only described as the biggest onscreen Jedi genocide since Emperor Palpatine went full hologram mode and issued the dreaded Order 66. The very first scene of The Acolyte set the tone as Carrie-Anne Moss' Indara was literally stabbed in the heart. An episode later, Dean Charles Chapman's Torbin ended his decade-long Barash Vow to suck down some poison willingly.

Then it was the Wookiee Kelnacca's turn to bite the dust, the Jedi hermit ending up on the receiving end of the Stranger's laser sword. Adding injury to insult, poor Joonas Suotamo had to play dead in a Wookiee suit for way too long. "It was actually very uncomfortable," recalls the actor, who has also played Chewbacca in three films. "The position that I am in, I was able to withstand that for about four-and-a-half minutes, and then I had to just stand up because those space chairs are not always that comfortable." (Damn space chairs.)

But none of that could have prepared fans for the carnage to come in episode 5. For Headland, it was the body count she wanted to surprise people with, not the actual identity of the Stranger. The showrunner anticipated many would figure out the Qimir/Stranger connection before the unmasking, and was totally cool with that because she wasn't trying to fool anyone in the first place — intentionally leaving breadcrumbs along the way. "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!'" says Headland. "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."

Headland did have one trick up her sleeve, however — lulling the viewer into a false sense of security by sending some new (and clearly expendable) Jedi into the fray alongside her series stars. "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'a 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.'"

As for the brutality of the deaths — decapitations, Force pulling one victim onto a lightsaber protruding from the back of an already slain partner, snapping the neck of a defeated foe — even Headland was somewhat surprised by what she was able to get away with on the family-friendly franchise. "I just figured someone would stop me and nobody did," she says with a laugh. "I figured someone would say, 'This is too far!' But they didn't."

The cast was certainly taken aback by the savagery. "We were all like, 'Leslye, the way that you take them out is so brutal!'" laughs Stenberg. "'What the hell? What kind of sick, twisted masochist are you?'" (Responds Headland: "I guess I always thought, 'Well, Anakin killed a bunch of children, so…'")

But even the victims themselves appreciated the extreme death toll put in place to raise the stakes. "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," says Keen. "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.'"

Stenberg notes that it was clear to all during filming that the series was reaching a turning point through all the carnage. "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."

Indeed, when the dust storm kicked up by the Stranger finally settled, every single character at the end of the episode was in a much different place than when it began. Well, those who were still alive, anyway.

Natural born killer

While the deaths of Jecki and Yord may have shocked viewers, it was no surprise to the actors, who were informed of their untimely demises by Headland when they first took the jobs. "Honestly, that's what really sold me," says Keen. "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!'"

Barnett used the knowledge to help inform his performance. "No one ever wants to be cut out of a show," he explains. "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."

The two partners-in-death bonded over their (duel of the) fates. "Me and Charlie were joking about that all the time," says Keen, recalling their time filming with a smile. "Whenever we were on set and anyone would be complaining, me and Charlie would be like, 'Peace out, we're dying in two weeks!'"

Even Lee Jung-jae got into the fun at the expense of his onscreen Padawan. "We'd been doing a really long day, and I was like, 'Ha, I die tomorrow,' to JJ," recalls Keen. "And JJ just looks at me and went, 'I wish.' Everyone was in on the joke that me and Charlie were so excited to die."

Still, when push came to death, Barnett could not bring himself to witness his friend getting repeatedly lightsaber-stabbed into submission. "They asked me if I wanted to go watch Dafne's death, and I was like, 'No, are you f---ing kidding me? I love her. I don't want to see her die four times over. It's just visceral and f---ed up and sad. No, I don't need all that.'"

The person doing the dying in that scene had a somewhat rosier take on filming Jecki’s final breaths. "I had so much fun doing the death," says Keen, whose end also coincided with the identity reveal of the Stranger when her lifeless body crumpled to the ground. "It was a huge honor to get to be the person that took the helmet off him," she beams while heralding her character's final act. "That was something really exciting to me."

And exciting to Jacinto, who had been patiently waiting to strut his stuff as the lightsaber-wielding menace. The Stranger was actually inspired by the character of Drunken Cat from the 1966 Hong Kong martial arts film Come Drink With Me. A seemingly inebriated goofball concerned only with finding his next beverage and occasionally breaking into song, Drunken Cat is later revealed to be a powerful Shaolin master who takes down a group of hostage-holding bandits. However, Headland wanted to flip the script, making her ruse character a force of evil. Once she started fleshing out her villain in hiding, "Manny immediately came up for me as the perfect person to do this."

It seemed like a natural match. After all, Jacinto had already fooled audiences once as a Blake Bortles-loving Florida DJ posing as a Taiwanese Buddhist Monk on The Good Place. But it was actually his role on another series that caught Headland's attention. "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."

So confident, it turns out, that Jacinto did not even have to audition for the part. And once he signed on, he and Headland worked in close collaboration to bring the evil Drunken Cat to life. "We talked a lot about how you take a low-status character and convert him to a badass," says the actor. "He's a guy that is so under the radar, that nobody is paying attention to, and all of a sudden he's actually the guy pulling the strings."

Of course, pulling those strings — and pulling no punches — took a lot of behind-the-scenes work. "I had almost four months to train for that flight scene," says Jacinto. "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."

He didn't just get through it, he owned it. That is indeed Jacinto under the mask for almost every shot, as the actor asked — and was allowed — to do the majority of his fight stunts.

"He had been waiting for this moment the whole shoot," says Stenberg. "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." Even if that meant killing almost everything and everyone that moved.

But there is another element to the Stranger beyond mere force… and Force. "We wanted a character that was not just oppressive and powerful, but when you see him, you feel disturbed by him," says Jacinto. "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."

That disturbance extends to the Stranger's outfit, and even the way he enters the screen. "His helmet's not that different from a [classic] Star Wars villain," notes Headland. "But the grin is like this smile that lasts too long, and was meant to be really unsettling to the Jedi. It's not that they're afraid of him, it's that they find him unsettling. Even his intro, when he floats down at the end of episode 4, we shot that in reverse because we just wanted the audience to be like, 'What is this?'"

The Stranger's last line of the episode, as he covers up a passed-out Osha, fits in perfectly with that eerie and disconcerting vibe: "What extraordinary beings we are. Even in the revelation of our triumph, we see the depth of our despair."

What does it even mean? "I think it's essentially our introduction into the third act," says Jacinto. "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 chaos after the storm

Even with the reveal of the Stranger… and the brutal slayings of Jecki and Yord… and the dead Wookiee in the hut… and a scene-stealing tracker named Bazil (who has Disney Store top-seller written all over his adorable little rodent face), the biggest game-changer moving forward is the twins swapping places, with Mae dramatically shearing her own hair with a lightsaber to impersonate her sister and infiltrate the Jedi.

"Trust me, you don't know how many conversations there were about this," Stenberg snickers about the hair-cutting scene. "Even going into episode 1, we were like, 'Okay, so episode 5, she has to chop off the hair. That means it needs to be done with the saber. How can we create two hairstyles where if chopped by a saber it would fall into the other hairstyle? And are we going to do it at this angle? And if it's CGI, and we put in the hair at this angle, then it won't cover the lightsaber to look accurate.' Oh my God, so many conversations!"

And now the conversation turns to what happens as Mae works undercover right under the nose of the final entry on her hit list, Sol, while Osha has been found by the Stranger. "The power dynamics and structures that we've seen so far have now kind of been invested," says Stenberg, "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?"

That could lead to a reckoning for Lee Jung-jae's Sol. "Mae says, 'They've brainwashed you," Headland notes. "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."

That information could be coming from different directions as well. "Osha is going to want to hear some of the things that the Stranger has to say," Jacinto teases ominously.

Clearly, there are still answers as to what actually happened on Brendok that need to be answered. Why did Torbin willingly take the poison and ask for forgiveness? Why did Kelnacca go into hiding and scribble those coven symbols all over his walls? And what was Sol going to tell Osha when they returned to the ship? Those answers may possibly come in the form of another flashback installment: While The Acolyte was filmed with different directors handling two-episode blocks, episodes 3 and 7 were both helmed by Kogonada. Asked whether that means we are heading back to Brendok in episode 7, Headland will only say, "You have to watch to find out." (So much for our Jedi mind tricks.)

Another flashback would seem to be required viewing, however, if for no other reason than to give fans the thrill of seeing a lightsaber-wielding Wookiee, which would otherwise seem unlikely now that Kelnacca just got ended at the hands of the Stranger. "It's going to be interesting if we get to look at the past," says Suotamo. "The Jedi are these powerful people, but what do they do when faced with difficult choices? The whole series reflects that, and is asking that question. So I think it's going to be interesting if we get to see what happened to these Jedi before the events of the show."

Those choices have plainly haunted Sol. "I believe that all throughout those years, Sol was filled with a mixture of emotions, including remorse and deep regret," Lee Jung-jae says through an interpreter. "And also a very strong determination to never let something like that repeat itself. The question that he has struggled with was: How much sacrifice is needed in order to protect peace?"

For a show that has been killing off Jedi at a truly alarming rate, that last point could bear serious consideration moving forward, especially when the creator draws a parallel to the franchise's most famous sacrifice of all. "One of the most iconic relationships in Star Wars is the father-son dynamic, where the father is redeemed at the end of Return of the Jedi," says Headland. "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."

Whatever happens in the last three episodes, do not expect Headland to slow her Boonta Eve Classic pace. "Something that I've noticed is first seasons will end on what should have been the break into act two," she says. "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?"

Headland does say she has "four or five major mysteries" she'd like to hit in season 2 if the show gets renewed by Disney+. And she may need to find a way to keep the series going, if only to keep her newly revealed villain employed. "When she first told me about the character, I was like, 'This is an actor's dream role to be able to do that switch. I need to do this,'" recalls Jacinto. "And that passion just fueled me all the way through until the end of filming. I don't really know how I can do anything else after this. I think I should just retire because I think this is it."

What else would you expect him to say? After all, only a Sith deals in absolutes.

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