Disney released the trailer for its new “Star Wars: The Acolyte” series on Tuesday, and while I’m excited to explore the new High Republic era of galactic history, the teaser offers one major clue that this new show will be woke AF.
Now, before you hit me with, “Of course it is! Disney Star Wars has been woke garbage from the beginning,” let me stop you right there. No, it hasn’t.
You could make a case for “Solo” and “The Last Jedi” being woke, but not much else. “The Force Awakens” was derivative, but it wasn’t woke. “Rise of Skywalker” was unwatchable focus-grouped gobbledegook, but it wasn’t woke. “Rogue One” was a damn near perfect film. As for the Disney+ shows, “The Mandalorian” has been consistently solid, and “Book of Boba Fett” was fine once it turned into a backdoor season of “The Mandalorian.” “Kenobi” didn’t need to be made, and I didn’t like “Rebels” because I’m not eight years old. “Andor” absolutely whipped ass. I haven’t seen “Ahsoka.” (RELATED: ‘Star Wars’ Actor Reveals He Almost Lost His Role To Leonardo DiCaprio)
What I’m saying here is, miss me with your reductive “Disney Star Wars sucks” takes.
Anyway, back to the “Acolyte” trailer, which is light on details (and white men). Pretty much all we can glean from the 100-second video is that there’s some cool fight choreography and that some mysterious person or group is murdering Jedi.
Then, in the final moments, comes the kicker: “The isn’t about good or bad,” one character says. “This is about power and who gets to use it.”
Let’s unpack that. The showrunner for “Acolyte,” Leslye Headland, is the type of filmmaker who managed to work at least six uses of the word “queer” into an interview about the series. She especially likes stories that reimagine female villains as subversive heroes.
“When I was a young queer girl, I was just hanging out with Ursula the sea witch [from The Little Mermaid],” she told Empire. “As a queer girl growing up, if you don’t identify with the heroes, and the villains show up and they’re all queer-coded, you’re like — yes, that’s me!”
And Headland has indeed confirmed that the show’s story will be told “from the perspective of the bad guys.”
Because if there’s one thing we need, it’s more content insisting that women never do anything wrong, but when they do it’s cool and edgy and also the patriarchy’s fault. Society clearly didn’t get the message after “Wicked,” “Maleficent,” “Cruella,” “Ratched,” etc. (RELATED: QUAY: Why LGBT Activists Love Satanic Imagery)
LGBTQ+ activist Leslye Headland is a new director in the Star Wars franchise:
Her goal for the films? To make it LGBTQ-inclusive and similar to Disney fairy tales. pic.twitter.com/Anfkn9RciK
— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) March 19, 2024
A few more data points:
According to the show’s official character roster, Jodie Turner-Smith is playing Mother Aniseya, “the leader of a coven of Witches who value their independence and the preservation of their beliefs and powers.” Charlie Barnett plays Yord, “an overachiever and a rule follower” whose “need to be a by-the-book Jedi can cloud his mind.”
Put it all together, and the show’s woke agenda becomes clear.
Aniseya and her “coven” will be Indigenous-coded Force users (perhaps Dathomir Nightsisters) set in opposition to the Western-coded Jedi. Wookiepedia makes note of the Nightsisters’ matriarchal power structure, their supposed transcendence of the light/dark dichotomy and their history of “driving the colonizers” from their planet. A showrunner interested in “queering” Star Wars could hardly ask for more.
The Jedi, of course, will be presented as too rigid, too dogmatic, too compromised by their alliance with the Republic and too focused on self-denial.
In the end, two parties will perhaps form a temporary alliance against some other threat (the Sith?), during which the Jedi will learn some much-needed lessons about the validity of Indigenous folkways and their own complicity in systemic oppression. (RELATED: Audit Finds ‘No Issues’ With ‘Antiracist’ Research Center That Produced Little Original Work)
If I had to guess, there’s going to be a group of “indigenous” Force users who serve as the first act’s pseudo-antagonists to the Jedi, ultimately making the Jedi question its traditions and norms in ways the writers believe will speak to MODERN AUDIENCES, only for both groups to…
— Geoffrey Ingersoll (@GPIngersoll) March 19, 2024
Remember what Aniseya told us: All that matters is “power and who gets to use it.” Words like “good” and “bad” don’t correspond to moral realities. They just indicate the preferences of the oppressor class. This is pure Kendi-style neo-Marxist propaganda.
It’s also a betrayal of George Lucas’ vision. The prequels make it clear that the institutional Jedi Order was flawed, but there’s never any suggestion that their religion was false or somehow lacking. Truth was truth and goodness was goodness, whether its adherents numbered 10,000 integralist warrior-monks or a single old man and his desert farm boy apprentice.
In the centuries when the European state churches wielded political power, they committed their share of sins. That doesn’t mean Christians should lose faith in the gospel or swear off political engagement. But in an era when liberal Catholics are embracing South American syncretism and the Church of England wants to spend millions reinvigorating African paganism, it’s clear many have done exactly that.
Films like “Rogue One” and “The Last Jedi” deepened the spiritual vision of the original films. But with “Acolyte,” it seems clear that the modern, “remixed” religious sensibility has finally arrived in a galaxy far, far away.
Grayson Quay is an editor at the Daily Caller.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller.