In this week’s new episode of Star Wars: The Acolyte on Disney+, we saw the villainous character known as “The Stranger” exhibiting the ability to short out the Jedi’s lightsaber blades. It turns out that his armor and helmet are made of the fictional metal Cortosis, which has appeared in both Legends (Expanded Universe) and canon Star Wars continuity. Let’s take a brief tour through the history of this deep-cut Easter Egg.
Cortosis was created by author Michael A. Stackpole for the 1998 novel Star Wars: I, Jedi. There it is described as (per Wookieepedia) “a brittle, highly malleable metal capable not only of blocking energy attacks, but of disabling lightsaber weapons when it comes into contact with them.” The metal also pops up in other Legends novels such as Star Wars: Vision of the Future by Timothy Zahn (where it deactivates Luke Skywalker’s lightsaber, but “he is able to reignite the blade immediately,” similar to what we saw in The Acolyte last night), Star Wars: Legacy of the Force – Fury by Aaron Allston, and Star Wars: Riptide by Paul S. Kemp. In the 2005 comic book Star Wars: Purge and the 2006 comic Star Wars: Legacy, Cortosis “renders lightsabers useless for several minutes.”
Cortosis became more prevalent in the Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic video game and its sequel The Sith Lords, which “treated the effects of Cortosis weapons as merely energy-resistant and only capable of blocking lightsaber attack,” much like the behavior of Beskar metal in The Mandalorian and other recent Star Wars media. And Cortosis also made appearances (again, with varying properties) in the Star Wars: Jedi Knight video games, Star Wars: Obi-Wan, and the Star Wars: Darth Bane novel trilogy. That brings us to the current Star Wars canon, where Cortosis first appeared in the novel Star Wars: A New Dawn by John Jackson Miller and was later featured in Star Wars: Thrawn – Alliances by Zahn and the Star Wars: Doctor Aphra comic book, among a few other appearances.
But yesterday evening’s installment of The Acolyte, appropriately titled “Night,” was indeed the first appearance of Cortosis in live-action Star Wars content, thanks to creator and showrunner Leslye Headland (who has professed her love for the Star Wars EU) and her team behind the scenes. In addition to his armor briefly disabling lightsaber blades in this episode, it was also implied that the Stranger’s Cortosis helmet might be able to block a Jedi’s telepathic abilities– kind of like how Magneto’s helmet works in certain takes on Marvel’s X-Men superhero characters. If so, that would mark an intriguing new use for this metal that has evolved a great deal since it was first introduced into Star Wars lore more than 25 years ago. Hopefully we’ll get more details as The Acolyte hurtles toward its season finale in just a few weeks.
New episodes of Star Wars: The Acolyte are released on Tuesday evenings, exclusively via Disney+.