The Acolyte’s Dark Side Origins: Exploring the Sith Era 100 Years Before The Phantom Menace
When The Acolyte arrived on Disney+ in June 2024, it promised something Star Wars had never really shown on screen: a story about the dark side set when the Jedi were at their peak, not during a war or a collapse.
It also raised a sharp lore question many fans asked immediately:
If the show is set about 100 years before The Phantom Menace, in the late High Republic, how can it feature an active Sith‑aligned villain when the Jedi keep insisting the Sith have been “extinct for a millennium”?
To answer that, you have to look not just at the show’s plot, but at where it sits in the wider Star Wars timeline, how the Rule of Two actually works, and what creator Leslye Headland was trying to do with the Sith in this era.
This is the part of the story that The Acolyte quietly rewrote, connected, and in some ways clarified for the entire saga.
Where The Acolyte Sits in the Star Wars Timeline
Officially, The Acolyte takes place about 100 years before Episode I – The Phantom Menace, which is set in 32 BBY. That places the show around 132 BBY and, as Lucasfilm has repeatedly said, at “the end of the High Republic era.”
The High Republic itself is defined in current canon as a golden age of the Jedi and the Republic, stretching roughly from 500 BBY to 100 BBY. Publishing material and reference guides describe it as a period of expansion, exploration, and confidence. The Jedi are numerous, spread across the galaxy, and widely regarded as wise guardians rather than generals.
In that broader picture, the High Republic sits between two very different ages:
- The New Sith Wars and the rise of Darth Bane, around 1032 BBY, when the old Sith orders tear themselves apart.
- The “Fall of the Jedi” era that covers the prequel trilogy, roughly 100 BBY to 19 BBY, dominated by political decay and the Clone Wars.
The Acolyte is therefore not some vague “long ago” prequel. It is parked right at the hinge point between “Jedi golden age” and “Jedi downfall,” close enough to The Phantom Menace that some of its characters can plausibly influence the world that births Palpatine and Anakin.
The Jedi Believe the Sith Are Extinct. They Are Wrong.
To understand why this matters, you have to go back almost a thousand years before The Acolyte.
Canon sources say Darth Bane survives the final defeat of the old Sith at Ruusan around 1032 BBY and draws a brutal conclusion. Large Sith organizations, he decides, always destroy themselves through infighting. His solution is the Rule of Two:
> “There should only be two, no more, no less. One to embody power, the other to crave it.”
From that point on, there is only one Sith master and one apprentice at a time. Succession happens when the apprentice kills the master and takes their place. Everyone else who might follow the dark side is either a pawn, a rival cultist, or something short of a true Sith Lord.
The key point for The Acolyte is what the Jedi think happened at Ruusan. As far as the Order is concerned, the Sith were destroyed there. They treat Bane’s supposed death and the end of the New Sith Wars as the final word.
By the High Republic, that belief has hardened into dogma. In The Phantom Menace, when Qui‑Gon reports his duel with Darth Maul, Ki‑Adi‑Mundi answers flatly:
> “Impossible. The Sith have been extinct for a millennium.”
Mace Windu follows with another telling line:
> “I do not believe the Sith could have returned without us knowing.”
Those two statements define the Jedi mindset in the prequels. The Sith are a historical problem, not a current one. If any had returned, the Council is sure they would have sensed it.
High Republic reference material reinforces this. The Sith are treated as a long‑defeated enemy. The Jedi even build their temple on Coruscant over an ancient Sith shrine, then spend centuries containing and suppressing that influence rather than confronting what it might mean.
The reality, as we know from Bane and eventually from Darth Sidious, is very different. A single Banite line of Sith survives in secret for roughly a thousand years, working in the shadows, taking one apprentice at a time, and waiting for a chance to strike.
The Acolyte shows us what it looks like when that hidden line brushes up against the High Republic at its end.
Inside The Acolyte: A Dark-Side Mystery at the End of the High Republic
Leslye Headland built The Acolyte as a mystery thriller, not a war story. There are no fleets, no clone armies, and no galactic conflict. Instead, the show follows Jedi Master Sol and other Jedi as they investigate a series of murders targeting Jedi Masters across the Outer Rim.
Those attacks pull them into the orbit of twin sisters Osha and Mae Aniseya, who grew up in a coven of witches on the world of Brendok. One twin left to join the Jedi, the other remained with the coven. Both are tied to a strange vergence in the Force that created them.
Across eight episodes, the show pieces together two intertwined mysteries:
- Who is killing Jedi in the present day, and why?
- What exactly happened during the Jedi’s earlier mission to Brendok, which left the coven dead and the twins separated?
The answers, revealed through flashbacks and confrontations, paint a far messier picture of the late High Republic Jedi than older canon ever did.
On Brendok, four Jedi — Sol, Indara, Torbin and Kelnacca — investigate the coven and discover the twins’ unusual origin. In a chaotic confrontation, Sol impulsively kills Mother Aniseya, and the coven dies in the resulting fire and panic. The Jedi then cover up their role, blaming Mae for the destruction.
That lie shapes the entire series. Mae is trained by a mysterious master and sent to kill the Jedi involved. Osha struggles with loyalty to the Order that raised her and the truth about what happened to her family. Sol is haunted by guilt he refuses to fully admit.
At the center of the murders stands a man who initially seems like comic relief: Qimir, played by Manny Jacinto. He presents himself as a smuggler and apothecary, then gradually reveals far more dangerous skills.
On the jungle world Khofar, Qimir appears in full armor as “the Stranger”, wielding dual red lightsabers and a cortosis helmet that disrupts Jedi blades. In the season’s standout duel, he kills multiple Jedi and demonstrates clear dark‑side training.
Crucially, he tells Osha and Mae that the Jedi might call him “Sith”, but that he carefully eliminates any Jedi who discover him so the Order will not realize the Sith still exist. It is an explicit acknowledgement that the Banite line operates by remaining myth rather than open enemy.
By the finale, the show pulls back the curtain even further. We learn that:
- Qimir was once Vernestra Rwoh’s Padawan, expelled after embracing the dark side.
- He is now the apprentice of Darth Plagueis, firmly placing him in the canonical Banite lineage.
- A brief scene even shows Plagueis himself as a Muun, matching his long‑standing Legends appearance and giving him his first on‑screen moment.
The season ends with Osha making the darkest choice of all. She kills Sol using the Force, corrupting his blue kyber crystal into red, and agrees to train with Qimir. Mae, left behind with her memory wiped, becomes a kind of mirror image: a survivor with no clear path.
In the background, Vernestra Rwoh hides Qimir’s existence and blames the deaths on Sol. The Galactic Senate opens an investigation into the Jedi, foreshadowing the erosion of trust that will define the prequel era.
In other words, The Acolyte does not simply slip a random dark‑sider into the High Republic. It situates a Banite apprentice in this era and shows how Jedi mistakes, secrecy, and political pressure help give the Sith the secrecy they need.
Leslye Headland’s Plan: Star Wars From the Bad Guys’ Perspective
Headland has been very clear about why she chose this moment in the timeline.
In multiple interviews, she says she wanted to tell “Star Wars from the bad guys’ perspective” and was “very interested in telling a story about the Sith.” To do that, she needed them to be wildly outnumbered and on the back foot, not already ruling the galaxy.
That naturally led her to the Rule of Two period, when the Sith exist only as a secret master — apprentice line. The High Republic, with its confident, widely respected Jedi Order and absence of galaxy‑spanning war, offered exactly that.
She often describes the era as a kind of Renaissance for the Jedi. Her core story question, as she framed it, was:
> “How did we get to a point where a Sith Lord can infiltrate the Senate and none of the Jedi pick up on it?”
In one official StarWars.com conversation she compared seeing a Sith in this era to seeing a dinosaur. People have heard of them, she said, but meeting one would feel as unlikely as encountering a velociraptor. The legend is alive; the practical threat feels nonexistent.
That perspective shapes the show’s tone. The Jedi function as the institution. They are the dominant power, and they see themselves as enlightened guardians. The dark‑side characters, by contrast, are outnumbered underdogs who use secrecy and precision instead of armies.
It also explains why the story is built around personal duels and mysteries rather than battles. Headland called The Acolyte a “mystery thriller” because, in this slice of the timeline, “there is no war.” The conflicts are about truth, cover‑ups, and the gap between the Jedi’s self‑image and what they actually do.
Sith, Plagueis, and the Path Toward the Knights of Ren
By tying Qimir directly to Darth Plagueis, The Acolyte plugs the High Republic into one of the saga’s most important off‑screen figures.
Current canon outlines Plagueis as:
- A Muun Dark Lord of the Sith, trained by Darth Tenebrous.
- The master of Sheev Palpatine, who eventually becomes Darth Sidious and kills Plagueis in his sleep.
- A Sith obsessed with manipulating life and the Force, as hinted in Palpatine’s opera scene in Revenge of the Sith.
The show’s finale states that Qimir is now Plagueis’s apprentice, meaning he sits in the same extended line that will eventually produce Darth Sidious and Darth Vader. That one detail connects the late High Republic more tightly to the film era than any Jedi cameo could.
Even more intriguingly, an October 2025 release, The Art of The Acolyte, revealed that Headland and her team planned an additional twist for Qimir. According to that book, the intention was for him to evolve into the first Knight of Ren.
Because the Rule of Two limits the number of true Sith Lords, the writers did not want Qimir to become a third major Sith alongside Tenebrous and Plagueis. Instead, they envisioned him founding a Sith‑inspired but technically separate order, which would eventually echo forward to the Knights of Ren seen in the sequel trilogy.
The art book notes several deliberate visual hints. Qimir’s helmet shares design language with Kylo Ren’s. Some musical cues during his scenes nod subtly toward themes used in the sequels. Fans had speculated about a Ren connection while the show was airing; the 2025 material finally confirmed that this was more than coincidence.
Even with the show canceled, that plan matters. It suggests Lucasfilm saw The Acolyte as a bridge in both directions: backward to Bane and the hidden Sith millennium, and forward to Plagueis, Sidious, and the Knights of Ren.
What Happened Behind the Camera: Budget, Viewership, and Cancellation
For all its lore importance, The Acolyte was also a very expensive experiment.
Filming took place primarily at Shinfield Studios in Berkshire, UK, from October 2022 to June 2023, with location work in Wales and Portugal. The series ran for eight episodes, each roughly 35 to 43 minutes, and premiered its first two installments on June 4, 2024. New episodes dropped weekly until July 16, 2024.
Early reports suggested a budget around $180 million. Later Disney filings put the gross production cost at $230.8 million. After $43.8 million in UK tax credits, the net cost landed at about $187 million.
Disney said the show drew 4.8 million “views” on its first day and 11.1 million in its first five days, making it Disney+’s biggest series premiere of 2024 at that time. However, that total was still about 3 million views lower than the five‑day launch of Ahsoka.
Nielsen’s U.S. streaming charts estimated 488 million minutes watched for the first week, covering the two‑episode premiere. That trailed the debut weeks of Andor, Ahsoka, and The Mandalorian season three. Viewership then dropped enough that The Acolyte fell out of Nielsen’s top‑10 streaming originals after week three, only returning for the finale with 335 million minutes, apparently the weakest finale week for any Star Wars Disney+ series.
At the same time, analytics firm Luminate calculated a broader picture. Across calendar 2024, The Acolyte generated about 2.7 billion minutes watched, making it the second‑most‑watched Disney+ series of the year behind Percy Jackson and the Olympians, which drew roughly 3.0 billion minutes.
Even so, in August 2024 Lucasfilm chose not to move forward with a second season. Trade reports linked the decision to the combination of high cost and viewership that was solid but not spectacular for a show at that budget level. Disney Entertainment co‑chair Alan Bergman later cited the production cost, above $230 million, as a key factor and described the performance as “satisfactory but not enough” to justify more episodes.
Critically, the series fared better. Review aggregators placed it around the high‑70s percent with critics, and outlets like Entertainment Weekly later ranked it fifth among all Star Wars series, praising its ambition and moral complexity. Audience scores were lower and tangled up in a documented review‑bombing campaign that targeted the show’s casting and creative choices rather than its lore.
Reassessing The Acolyte’s Place in Sith History
A year after its cancellation, coverage in 2025 has started to treat The Acolyte less as a failed franchise launch and more as a one‑season statement.
Retrospectives highlight several points in particular:
- Manny Jacinto’s Qimir is now often described as “one of the coolest Sith in the franchise,” helped by the mix of menace and charm he brings to the Stranger.
- The Brendok flashback arc, with its Rashomon‑style multiple perspectives, is praised for challenging the idea of Jedi infallibility.
- The finale’s explicit link to Darth Plagueis and the behind‑the‑scenes plan to tie Qimir to the Knights of Ren are seen as major connective tissue across eras.
This reassessment lines up with how the High Republic publishing initiative had previously treated the era. For years, the books and comics framed this time as essentially free of open Sith activity, focusing instead on the Nihil and the Drengir as main antagonists. The assumption, in‑universe and out, was that the Sith were long gone.
What The Acolyte adds is not a contradiction of that idea, but a hidden layer beneath it. The Banite Sith are indeed operating in this period, just as quietly as Bane intended. The Jedi are as confident and respected as the books portray, but their confidence is built in part on denial and selective memory.
The show’s final image of Osha stepping into Qimir’s world, kyber crystal freshly bled, does not overturn the High Republic’s “golden age” label. Instead, it marks the first crack in the armor that we have actually seen on screen.
What This Era Adds to the Dark Side Story
Even without a second season, The Acolyte changed how the Sith’s hidden millennium looks.
We now have, in canon:
- A clear placement of an active Banite apprentice about 100 years before The Phantom Menace.
- On‑screen confirmation that Darth Plagueis is operating in that era, in his Muun form.
- A direct suggestion, via 2025 art and commentary, that this period seeds the Knights of Ren concept that will echo centuries later.
- A detailed case study of how Jedi mistakes, secrecy, and political pressure create cover for the Sith to remain unseen.
The High Republic is still a time when the Sith are thought extinct. That line from Ki‑Adi‑Mundi remains technically accurate from the Jedi Council’s point of view. What The Acolyte shows, however, is why that certainty is so fragile, and how close the Order already is to being blindsided by a Sith who walks the halls of power in plain sight.
For fans tracking the dark side across the saga, the late High Republic is no longer just a bright prologue to the prequels. Thanks to The Acolyte, it has become a crucial chapter in the Sith’s long plan, where a hidden master and apprentice test the edges of a complacent Jedi Order and quietly prepare the galaxy for the shadows to return.
