Star Wars: The Acolyte announced that actors Dafne Keen (His Dark Materials), Rebecca Henderson (Russian Doll), and Carrie-Anne Moss (The Matrix) will be among a bevy of genre-savvy performers set to make waves in the Disney Plus series.
Officially announced in December 2020, Star Wars: The Acolyte will be set during the High Republic Era, well before the mainline Star Wars films and shows. Little else is known about the project, though fans now have a better sense of who will help bring the show to life.
The cast of the 8-episode series, which began filming the day before Halloween of this year, will see the performers portraying the High Republic characters use the Volume technology developed for The Mandalorian, Disney’s biggest cash cow in the current crop of series. Previous announcements saw Squid Game lead Lee Jung-Jae joining the cast, as well as The Good Place star (and megafan of Jacksonville Jaguars quarterback, Blake Bortles) Manny Jacinto. The ensemble cast will be led by the Acolyte themself, Amandla Stenberg (The Hunger Games).
Moss joins the series fresh off a fourth Matrix film and Dafne Keen is the lead in the HBO version of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials books. For Rebecca Henderson, from Russian Doll, it will feel a bit like Old Home Week since her Russian Doll co-star Charlie Barnett had been previously announced. Henderson and the rest of the cast will be working with Russian Doll co-creator Leslye Headland, who developed The Acolyte as a series.
It's the earliest series in the Star Wars timeline, reaching back a century before The Phantom Menace reintroduced the galaxy to the rising threat of the Sith in the form of Sheev Palpatine. Stenberg will play a Sith acolyte in an era when, after the Jedi and Sith wars, the Sith are truly supposed to be a thing of the past. Presumably, The Acolyte will show how such an insidious group could survive in what’s supposed to be a shining era for the galaxy to the point where they eventually rule the entire thing.
Star Wars: The Acolyte is expected to premiere on Disney Plus in late 2023 or early 2024.
Source: Disney/Twitter