Over the last few years, Star Wars has found a comfortable home on the small screen thanks to shows that largely trade on nostalgia for eras and characters we already know like in The Mandalorian and Ahsoka. But the franchise is getting ready to try something very new with the next upcoming Star Wars series, The Acolyte. The new series will be set hundreds of years before the events of any movie or show we’ve seen before, and with it will come some very different characters, with very different relationships.
The Acolyte will introduce Logan’s Defne Keen as Jecki Lon a Jedi Padawan to Master Sol, played by Lee Jung-jae. Speaking with EW, Keene explains that her character has a relationship with her master that is somewhat different from what we’ve seen before, as Jecki actually listens and follows orders. She explained…
I'd say she is a very dedicated Padawan. She's definitely in awe of him in a very kind of sweet way. She thinks the absolute world of him in a way that I think they have a very sweet relationship, but she's much more aware of the authority difference than, for example, Obi-Wan and Anakin. She's very much like, ‘No, he's the master and I'm the Padawan and he's perfect. And everything he says, I have to follow to the T.’
To be fair, the relationship between Obi-Wan and Anakin is like most of the Jedi relationships we see throughout the movies up to this point. Anakin is constantly questioning and arguing with Obi-Wan, but so is Luke when learning from Yoda, or Rey when learning from Luke. This makes this relationship potentially very interesting because we will see a Padawan who really listens to her Master that's at least something we haven't seen.
The difference in relationship may, at least in part, be due to the setting of The Acolyte. The show is set during the High Republic era of Star Wars, which has previously only been seen in print. It’s hundreds of years before the prequels, and the Jedi have no major Force-wielding adversaries. It will certainly mean that the Jedi as an order will be somewhat different than we’re used to, which is part of what makes the show so exciting.
What it means to be a Jedi in the High Republic is different than what we’ve seen before. The era is seen as the Jedi Golden Age, with the order existing on different worlds all over the galaxy from the core worlds to the Outer Rim. This will certainly give us some Jedi who just see the galaxy differently than characters like Obi-Wan or Anakin.
Dafne Keen is just one member of an impressive The Acolyte cast, which includes Amandla Stenberg and Carrie-Ann Moss among others. The Acolyte premiere date on Disney+ is set for June 4.
