The divisive Star Wars TV series The Acolyte would have featured a connection between The Stranger and villain Kylo Ren had the show been given a Season 2 and not been cancelled, its showrunner has confirmed.
Creator and showrunner Leslye Headland, who is perhaps best known for her work as a playwright, revealed that The Acolyte’s central villain, Qimir also known as The Stranger, would have gone on to start The Knights of Ren, the cult the young Kylo Ren joined following his departure from the Jedi. Indeed, The Acolyte would have confirmed The Stranger as the first Knight of Ren.
“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,” Headland wrote in The Art of Star Wars: The Acolyte by Kristin Baver, as reported by SFF Gazette.
“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.”
The Knights of Ren are not Sith per se, as Headland explains, but they also align themselves much more with the dark side of the Force than the light the Jedi follow. Some of the Knights seemingly appear with Kylo Ren in The Rise of Skywalker, but the context surrounding them, who they really are, and why Ren is with them is never properly explored.
Knowing all of this, some fans will undoubtedly be wishing more of this could’ve been explored both in further seasons of The Acolyte, and the project Adam Driver, who played Kylo Ren / Ben Solo, and director Steven Soderbergh were trying to make — The Hunt For Ben Solo — before Disney tossed it in the trash.
Indeed, Star Wars owner Disney canceled The Acolyte after Season 1, leaving a number of plot threads, chief among them the dramatic first appearance of Darth Plagueis in live-action form, dangling, perhaps never to be resolved.
Since the cancelation, a number of actors who appeared in The Acolyte have said they still hope for a Season 2. In December last year, Manny Jacinto, who played Qimir, said Darth Plagueis would have had a bigger role in further seasons of The Acolyte, but didn’t reveal too much because “we could come back.”
Meanwhile, Sol actor Lee Jung-Jae has said he was “quite surprised” to hear The Acolyte wouldn’t get a second season, which Headland was thinking about even before Season 1 premiered. Others, including Amandla Stenberg, have said they weren’t shocked by the cancellation, however. “I’m going to be transparent and say that it’s not a huge shock for me,” she said. “I was in the bubble of my own reality, but for those who aren’t aware there’s been a rampage of vitriol that we’ve faced since the show was even announced. When it was still just a concept and no one had even seen it.”
Here’s the page from The Art of The Acolyte book where Leslye reveals that The Stranger was supposed to be the first Knight of Ren, in HD quality.
This page and others were initially previewed at Celebration Japan and I guess no one read them too carefully lol pic.twitter.com/NxZMvXfU7T— Retney’s Holocron YouTube (@retneysholocron) October 26, 2025
Mother Aniseya actress Jodie Turner-Smith raised this issue too, calling out Disney for not doing enough for the cast who faced waves of racist slander online. “They’ve got to stop doing this thing where they don’t say anything when people are getting f**king dog-piled on the internet with racism and bulls**t,” she said. Jacinto is still eager to create more of The Acolyte though, calling Season 2 his life’s goal not long after its cancellation.
Lex Briscuso is a film and television critic and a freelance entertainment writer for IGN. You can follow her on Twitter at @nikonamerica.
