Over the past couple weeks, eagle-eared viewers of Star Wars: The Acolyte have noticed John Williams’s musical theme for Kylo Ren popping up in the two most recent episodes of the live-action Disney+ series. Naturally fans have been theorizing about why, and we now have official word from creator / showrunner Leslye Headland on this connection.
In an interview with Inverse posted on Monday, Headland commented about the Kylo Ren theme: “It is there on purpose, but I can’t tell you why, and I can’t go into what it is. But you shall see.” The implication is that we will learn more about this connection across the vast expanse of the Star Wars timeline before the end of the season, which is coming up in less than two weeks. But the prevailing fan theory that has been percolating is that The Acolyte may turn out to be an origin story for the Knights of Ren.
Who are the Knights of Ren? This group– which first appeared in flashbacks via the 2015 J.J. Abrams film Star Wars: The Force Awakens– utilized the dark side of the Force and its powers but did not consider themselves to be Sith. Their leader, who went only by “Ren” (a title more than a name, acquired by killing the previous Ren) wielded a red-bladed lightsaber, and we know that the Knights were in operation as early as the Galactic Civil War thanks to their appearances in the recent Star Wars: Crimson Reign and Star Wars: Hidden Empire comic-book miniseries. Decades later, Ren would be killed by Ben Solo in the Star Wars: The Rise of Kylo Ren miniseries, with the young son of Han and Leia claiming the title of the group’s fearsome leader.
Could Qimir, the Manny Jacinto-played character also known as The Stranger, become the first “Ren” by the end of this debut season of The Acolyte? We know he dislikes the Jedi Order and wants to branch out on his own as a Force user, and in this week’s new episode “Teach / Corrupt” he says that he was “thrown away” by a master, with the implication being that it may have been a Jedi who inflicted the scars on his back. But does Qimir also feel rejected by the Sith? Is he, like Kylo Ren will much later on, considering a third path between these two dichotomies in the Force… ultimately choosing to form the Knights of Ren? The clues are there, with the most obvious one being hidden in Michael Abels’s musical score, but we likely won’t know the definitive answer to that particular question until The Acolyte concludes its season on July 16th.
New episodes of Star Wars: The Acolyte are released on Tuesday evenings, exclusively via Disney+.