This week’s new episode of The Acolyte introduced Star Wars fans to a new coven of witches on the planet Brendok, but these are far from the first witches we’ve known of from A Galaxy Far, Far Away. Let’s take a brief journey back through Star Wars history.
The first witches to appear in the Star Wars storytelling universe were the mind-witches from the 1983 Star Wars newspaper comic strip in a serialized story called “The Paradise Detour” by writer Archie Goodwin and artist Al Williamson. The mind-witch S’ybil used Force illusions to fool their victims and sought victims like Luke Skywalker and members of the Empire, intending to drain their life energy in order to make herself young again.
The next Star Wars character to fit the definition of a witch was the villainous Morag from the 1985 Ewoks cartoon. According to Wookieepedia, this magic-wielding character “menaced the Ewoks for nearly 200 local years” on the forest moon of Endor.
Later that same year, the character of Charal was created for the made-for-TV movie Ewoks: The Battle for Endor. She was later retconned to become the first Dathomirian Nightsister to appear in the Legends (then “Expanded Universe”) timeline.
Speaking of the Nightsisters, author Dave Wolverton came up with them for the 1994 novel Star Wars: The Courtship of Princess Leia. This was the springboard that really brought witches to prominence in the Star Wars galaxy.
Also during the 1990s, Sith sorceress Aleema Keto from the Star Wars: Tales of the Jedi comic books was referred to as a witch.
In 2005, the Star Wars Galaxies computer-game expansion entitled Rage of the Wookiees introduced the Sayormi Queen, an evil cult leader who resided in the low levels of the Kkowir Forest on Kashyyyk.
Then in 2011, the Star Wars: The Clone Wars animated series brought the Dathomirian witches to the forefront with the episode “Nightsisters.” This sect went on to appear in another ten episodes of the show, and gave us the recurring characters of Mother Talzin and Asajj Ventress.
The lore of the Nightsisters was expanded upon in other Legends material, and then after Disney acquired Lucasfilm in 2012, we learned much more about them via the Star Wars: Jedi video games (through the popular supporting character of Merrin) and the Star Wars: Ahsoka live-action series on Disney+ (through Morgan Elsbeth and the trio of witches called Klothow, Aktropaw, and Lakesis– pictured at the very top of this article).
The Dathomirian Nightsisters use a green-colored dark-side “magick” and thus so far do not appear to be directly related to the new coven of witches (led by Mother Aniseya) we met in The Acolyte episode 3, “Destiny.” Hopefully we’ll discover more about these witches as the series continues.
New episodes of Star Wars: The Acolyte are released Tuesday evenings, exclusively via Disney+.