Is It Time To Say ‘The Acolyte’ Proved the Reylos Right?

Star Wars: The Acolyte has finished its first season run as one of the most-streamed shows of the summer, according to Rotten Tomatoes. Fans are locked in and campaigning for the show’s renewal left and right on social media. So … is it time to say it?

Showrunner Leslye Headland is releasing interview after interview where she shows just how much she truly gets the side of the fandom she has designated as her target audience. And I think it’s about high time to say that the Reylos were right, actually—they were right in 2017 and they have continued to be right ever since.

That’s because it’s clear that The Acolyte was created by someone who had seen the Sequel Trilogy and had ended up very disappointed by certain decisions made in it, especially during the absolute disaster train that was The Rise of Skywalker. Or at the very least, someone who believes that romance does have a place in a universe like Star Wars.

Actually, that’s one of the many criticisms that were hurled at this show (because of course, this is the Star Wars fandom we’re talking about, and it’s not always a nice place to be): that a romance story doesn’t fit into Star Wars. And it truly boggles my mind because weren’t Han and Leia a major part of the Original Trilogy? Weren’t they front and center in the poster for The Empire Strikes Back, which is widely considered to be the best movie out of them all? And romance arguably had a pretty major place in the Prequel Trilogy, as well.

So of course romance, always a catalyst for action and a powerful motivator, belongs in Star Wars. And the Reylos were right in seeing it in Rey and Kylo’s interactions onscreen, especially in The Last Jedi. And they were also right to argue about it and create their own sub-fandom about it, which became one of the most creative and prolific of them all, it should be added. That’s true whatever you might think of the ship—and of course, barring the fringes of the Rely fandom that were harassing and abusive to other fans.

And the Reylos were also right in seeing the potential of a dark side/light side romance hinged on the whole enemies-to-lovers dynamic—true enemies to lovers, that is, where the two sides of the ship actually genuinely hate each other and try to off each other instead of simply exchanging a couple of prickly jokes and innuendos. The narrative tension founded in the lore is simply too strong to ignore. You have this cosmic Force that connects everything and that people have divided into a light and a dark side, both with their sets of rules and behaviors, opposed and yet forever attracted to each other, like magnets, in a clash that always ends up feeling unavoidable. It’s a perfect setting for some sweeping, epic romance.

Of course, this is not to say that Osha and Qimir are the same as Rey and Kylo Ren. There are parallels, certainly, and some vague similarities, but their stories go in two widely different directions. Kylo has always been pulled to the light and ascends to it, while Osha is called to the dark and descends into it. And that’s great. We love to see a good corruption arc that isn’t framed in a completely negative way—a stepping into one’s power and out of repression, in a perfect example of a female power fantasy.

Osha and Qimir are also better written, in a way, because there’s a clear creative direction behind them that was taken up from the very first episode rather than storylines flailing around according to who was in charge at the moment, as it was for the Sequel Trilogy. But still, I maintain that they exist in The Acolyte because Rey and Kylo existed first—and that’s something that the part of the fandom the show was speaking more directly to has very much picked up on.

Speaking from experience, I’ve seen several accounts spring back to life after having been pretty much shut down to new content since The Rise of Skywalker. I have so many friends who decided to return to Star Wars original content because The Acolyte seemed to really embrace and respect their part of the fandom rather than bait it and then shove it away as most installments in the Star Wars franchise do. It really feels like a renaissance of sorts, one that has immediately awoken the immense transformative potential of fandom that is popping up all over Twitter and Archive of Our Own.

If anything, it’s a sign that there is a desire out there for stories like this, stories that aren’t just drenched in nostalgia—and don’t get me wrong, I also love a good nostalgia-based story and sobbed my eyes out at every single apparition of Anakin Skywalker in any Star Wars show—and that recognize a part of the fandom that has been largely ignored for too long. I would say it’s food for thought at the very least.