It was always clear that Qimir (Manny Jacinto), the mysterious antagonist at the heart of The Acolyte, was more than he seemed. Even after he revealed himself as the Stranger, a ruthless dark side warrior hellbent on destroying the Jedi Order, it felt like his story was only beginning. Acolyte showrunner Leslye Headland left plenty of breadcrumbs throughout the series, the most notable being a reference to another infamous Star Wars character.
Michael Abel’s score borrows from the theme of Kylo Ren, the misunderstood antagonist of Star Wars’ sequel trilogy. Fans who picked up on that connection assumed — or hoped — that Qimir would have some connection to the enigmatic faction known as the Knights of Ren, which served as Kylo’s shock troops.
Headland kept her cards close to her chest while The Acolyte’s first season aired, telling Inverse that Kylo’s theme was “there on purpose,” and that future storylines would explore why. Unfortunately, The Acolyte never got the chance to unravel the mystery: Disney and Lucasfilm cancelled the show shortly after its Season 1 finale. We may never get a satisfying conclusion to one of Star Wars’ most intriguing stories, but the upcoming release of The Art of the Acolyte does finally confirm what many assumed about Qimir.
Qimir and Osha would’ve been important to Star Wars history.
The Art of the Acolyte dives into Headland’s designs and plans for Qimir, and even sheds some light on his connection to Kylo Ren. Not only would he have been a Knight of Ren, but he would have been the first, creating the organization to circumvent the Sith’s stifling Rule of Two.
“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 says in The Art of the Acolyte. “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.”
One of the big questions looming over The Acolyte’s finale was how Qimir and his new apprentice, Osha Aniseya (Amandla Stenberg), would fit into Sith history, as the show’s final episode introduced Plagueis as a looming threat to their power. “Because there’s Plagueis and because we know that Palpatine is eventually Plagueis’ apprentice, we know that these two people are not going to fall into that set lineage,” Headland told Inverse after the Acolyte finale. Making them the founding members of a new sect would have circumvented a major conflict with the Sith, expanding the galaxy without upsetting Star Wars canon.
The Acolyte would have done what the sequels couldn’t by exploring the Knights of Ren.
Making Qimir the first Knight of Ren might have also fixed one of the sequels’ most irritating blind spots. The Knights were introduced as a compelling threat with plenty of intrigue surrounding their history and their connection to Kylo. But no one — not J.J. Abrams, who created the group, or Rian Johnson, who took over one chapter of the trilogy — seemed interested in exploring any of it. By the time the trilogy closed with The Rise of Skywalker, the Knights were little more than expendable, faceless warriors. There are a lot of problems with the sequels, but their disposal of the Knights is one of the biggest. The Acolyte wouldn’t have fixed every missed opportunity, but learning where the group came from would’ve connected past and future.
