A handful of shots featuring a red lightsaber is all Disney+ Star Wars show The Acolyte‘s trailer needed to spark a frenzy of speculation. Many fans aren’t just convinced The Acolyte‘s main villain is a Sith Lord – they think they know which one.
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Actually, it’s a little more complicated than that. The Star Wars fanbase currently has two frontrunners for the role of shadowy Sith mastermind in The Acolyte. Some say Darth Plagueis is the obvious choice, while others insist Darth Tenebrous fits the bill. Neither character is a household name, yet collectively, they’re a pretty big deal within the franchise’s wider lore.
So, who are Darth Plagueis and Darth Tenebrous? And is there any evidence that one of them is The Acolyte‘s Sith Lord?
The Acolyte Sith Lord Candidate #1: Darth Plagueis
If Darth Plagueis’ name sounds familiar, it’s because even casual Star Wars fans have heard it before. Supreme Chancellor Palpatine – himself secretly the Sith Lord Darth Sidious – recounts “The Tragedy of Darth Plagueis the Wise” in 2005’s Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith. According to this Sith legend, Plagueis’ command of the Dark Side of the Force was so crazy-powerful that he could cheat death and keep those he cared about from dying, too. But as Palpatine notes, Plagueis nevertheless met his end at the hands of his apprentice, implied in Revenge of the Sith (and confirmed in subsequent media) to be Palpatine himself.
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That’s everything the Star Wars movies have to say about Darth Plagueis. What about the franchise’s broader canon? Lucasfilm wiped most of Plagueis’ backstory from official continuity after Disney acquired the studio back in 2012, however, a few notable kernels of information survived the purge. We know he studied under Darth Tenebrous (more on him soon). We also know his immortality experiments and research helped make Palpatine’s resurrection in 2019’s Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker possible. As such, he exerts an outsized influence on the franchise for someone who never appears on-screen!
The Acolyte Sith Lord Candidate #2: Darth Tenebrous
While Darth Plagueis is at least namedropped in a Star Wars flick, Darth Tenebrous can’t even lay claim to this middling level of infamy. Indeed, the Sith Lord – a Bith, like the members of the Mos Eisley Cantina band – is a relatively obscure figure in post-Disney canon. Like Plagueis, most of Darth Tenebrous’ previously established history is now considered non-canonical Star Wars Legends material. Even so, his status as Plagueis’ master remains intact, cementing his credentials among the saga’s devotees.
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Other than that, Tenebrous’ CV is pretty thin. Current continuity pegs him as the likely designer of fan-favorite Sith Lord Darth Maul’s starship, the Scimitar, which is kind of neat. One of the resurrected Palpatine’s Sith Eternal legions was also named in his honor. This implies that (like his Legends counterpart), the Darth Tenebrous of Star Wars‘ revised timeline achieved something pretty major. Hopefully, Lucasfilm will get around to confirming what, exactly – maybe in The Acolyte?
Is Darth Plagueis or Darth Tenebrous The Acolyte’s Sith Lord?
So, based on the above, could Darth Plagueis or Darth Tenebrous emerge as The Acolyte‘s Sith Lord villain? If nothing else, the Star Wars timeline suggests they could. Both characters pre-date Palpatine’s reign as the Dark Lord of the Sith, which kicked off shortly before 1999’s Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. Given The Acolyte takes place a further 130 years before The Phantom Menace, Plagueis and Tenebrous were both potentially on the scene. Sure, this would make Plagueis pretty old when he died, but then prolonging lifespans was the dude’s whole deal.
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Plus, The Acolyte‘s showrunner Leslye Headland is on the record regarding Legends‘ influence on the show. While Plagueis and Tenebrous are part of the mainline canon, considering how much of their backstories belong to Legends, is this what Headland is driving at? Maybe. It could just as easily be wishful thinking, though. While we don’t get a clear look at the hand wielding The Acolyte‘s red lightsaber, it looks human. The same goes for the silhouetted figure glimpsed elsewhere in the trailer. So perhaps we’re dealing with a newly created baddie? Or even a Sith-in-training, in the form of Amandla Stenberg’s Mae?
Either of these scenarios (and several more) is likely. So yes, Darth Plagueis and Darth Tenebrous are both viable Acolyte antagonists – but neither is a dead cert. As Master Yoda so aptly put it in The Phantom Menace, “Hard to see, the Dark Side is.”
The Acolyte premieres on Disney+ on June 4, 2024.
