This story contains major spoilers for the first-season finale of The Acolyte.
In one of the last moments of The Acolyte’s season finale, The Stranger (Manny Jacinto), a Sith, and his new recruit, the former Jedi Osha (Amandla Stenberg) stand side by side. She’s holding a lightsaber; his hand closes around hers almost tenderly. The camera lingers on their silhouettes. Creator Leslye Headland describes this as her Fight Club moment in the world of Star Wars.
"I really own up to my homages," Headland says. "So I will own up to the fact that the last shot of the show is the last shot of Fight Club. It's the same shot."
In David Fincher's 1999 film, Edward Norton's Narrator—who’s been Tyler Durden all along, or vice versa—holds hands with Marla, played by Helena Bonham Carter, and they watch through a high-rise window as neighboring office towers begin to explode. The Acolyte doesn't feature a Pixies track, and the vista that The Stranger and Osha are facing looks a lot more peaceful, but Headland sees a clear parallel.
"The reason I wanted to do that is because that composition to me represents a standing together, simple intimacy in front of burning the world down, and the dramatic irony and the tragedy of [Osha and The Stranger] is that we know they won't do that," Headland explains.
The last episode of the first season of Headland's entry into the Star Wars canon is layered with tragedy even beyond that image. Osha learns that her former Jedi Master, Sol (Lee Jung-jae) had been deceiving her for years, in what he believed was an attempt to protect her. Upon hearing that Sol killed her mother, the Force witch Aniseya (Jodie Turner-Smith), Osha murders Sol herself, Force-choking him to death as he attempts to share his paternal love for her. Knowing that the Jedi are now pursuing her, Osha agrees to let The Stranger train her. As an act of further protection, The Stranger wipes the memory of his former disciple, Osha's twin Mae, so when she is apprehended she will not be able to disclose any information.
At the beginning of The Acolyte's first season, Mae was the furious warrior trying to systematically kill the people that were responsible for her isolation. Osha, on the other hand, still believed in the Jedi, even though she'd turned away from the group. By the end of the finale, they've essentially swapped personas. "It felt right that if Osha was going to embrace the Dark Side and her rage and being heartbroken, that Mae would become incredibly docile, basically," Headland explains. But it also sets the stage for another transformation: Mae is now a Jason Bourne-type figure, trying to rediscover herself. (Also like Bourne, she has a set of skills she may now be unaware of.)
It's ultimately a bittersweet conclusion to the season—and it also puts the viewer in the position of cheering for the Dark Side. Headland says she wanted to answer the question: "How can we have someone embrace the Dark Side without being tricked into it? Without stripping her of agency?"
Headland also was eager to offer a contrast to a classic Star Wars narrative. When Luke Skywalker discovers the truth about Darth Vader, he responds with forgiveness. Osha responds to her betrayal with ruthlessness—and yet it's hard not to identify with the ultimate pain she feels in that moment. Sol had good intentions in his desire to protect Osha, but ultimately was the cause of her loneliness.
It gets at a central theme of the series. To Headland, the Jedi “are extremely flawed. They always have been," she says.
In the world of The Acolyte, you understand why the Dark Side is alluring to someone like Osha, who realizes she has been lied to for her entire adult life. (It's not just because of Jacinto's cheekbones and biceps, although it’s that, too.) When she's introduced to the “If Evil, Why Hot?” meme as it's been used in reference to The Stranger, Headland says: "The Dark Side's sexy."
So where do these two crazy kids and their lightsaber go from here? Headland is cautious about telegraphing too much about the future of The Acolyte, which has not yet been renewed for a second season, but she does say that she wants to move forward in time as she explores this relationship. "To me, it's so tragic," she says. "It's very Gothic in a lot of ways. One to crave the power, one to hold it. Hopefully that image gives you the sense that they are equals, but at some point, in order to fulfill this, they can't be."
She also notes: "Then there's the complication of our dear friend Plagueis." That’d be the Sith Lord Darth Plagueis, who’s mentioned in the prequels as a historical figure and makes his first onscreen appearance in the Acolyte finale. (Canonically, he’s notable for attempting to manipulate the Force to create life, something we’ve seen Aniseya do successfully in The Acolyte, and for mentoring an apprentice named Sheev Palpatine.) "I would look forward,” Headland says of Plagueis, “to seeing him actively disturbing what they're trying to do."
Perhaps there's an alternative for Osha and The Stranger? "There are plenty of options besides being a Sith and apprentice and master," she says.
Beyond Plagueis, The Acolyte finale also teased another extremely familiar Star Wars figure. After the Fight Club moment, we cut to black—and then to Jedi Vernestra (Rebecca Henderson) walking into a meeting with a certain tiny, white-haired green guy. Headland says that introducing Yoda at this point in the story “just made sense.”
“In Vernestra’s effort to protect the Jedi,” Headland said, “at some point, she would have to inform her superior.”
The diminutive Jedi Master is the first iconic Lucas-era Star Wars character to show up in this series; working with him made Headland "starstruck," a rare occurrence for her. "I could barely speak," she says. "I had nothing to say. Everything that I've ever felt about Star Wars just rushed back to me. It was overwhelming."