‘X-23 With a Lightsaber’: Get Ready to Meet Jecki Lon in ‘The Acolyte’
The Acolyte is coming and we’re about to meet a lot of new characters. One of them is Jecki Lon, a Theelin Padawan learner we’ve seen training in promotional images and the trailer for the series. So what do we know about her?
Training under Master Sol (Lee Jung-jae), what we know about Jecki Lon right now is limited ahead of the show’s release. We do know that Dafne Keen is playing her, though, which means she is probably a badass. Keen became famous for playing X-23 in Logan and that was precisely why creator Leslye Headland made the character.
Speaking with IGN, Headland was asked about the importance of being the first woman to write, direct, and produce her own Star Wars series. (Headland also noted that she is not the first female director of a Star Wars property and shouted out Deborah Chow for her work on Obi-Wan Kenobi.)
She talked about the weight that role put on her shoulders but also how bringing increased diversity to the galaxy far far away was instinctual. “I think with the cast, honestly they were just all the people that I wanted,” she said, specifically praising Squid Game’s Lee Jung-jae, who plays Master Sol (and is performing in English for the first time).
Headland went on: “And then, somebody like Dafne Keen, I’d loved so much in Logan that, I wrote this character, and I was like, “you know what would be great, I’d love to see X-23 with a lightsaber. How do we make that happen?”
“So, that’s what I would say about the diversity of the cast,” Headland said. “Mostly they were people that were essentially my first choice.”
The series is set during the High Republic era and outside of it being the golden age of the Jedi, we are in completely new territory for the live-action Star Wars stories. But given that we know Jecki is inspired (at least in part) by X-23 is pretty epic. It says a lot about how fierce of a fighter Jecki Lon is going to be! She’s someone who can fight if she’s anything like X-23 and we can’t wait to see what she brings to the character.
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