Disney’s new Star Wars series, The Acolyte, will bring a much-needed queer perspective to the franchise, its showrunner has teased. The Acolyte will focus on the emergence of dark-side powers in the final days of the High Republic, an era that began roughly 200 years before the events of Episode I: The Phantom Menace kicked off the Skywalker saga.
Leslye Headland, who is a lesbian, serves as the Disney Plus series’ showrunner, writer and executive producer. She is the first openly queer person to take the reins of an on-screen Star Wars project, and has promised that her point of view as an LGBT+ person will be present in the new series.
She told The Advocate that she was “excited to do the type of character work” that she would normally do in her other projects as she joins the Star Wars universe. To her surprise, Headland said, this idea was something that “everyone was into”.