More than two years ago, we first got word that Russian Doll co-creator Leslye Headland was working on a “female-centric” Star Wars TV show for Disney+. What happened to the series? Well, Headland spent most of the pandemic writing it, and the series is being cast now. It’s called The Acolyte.

Headland revealed the title and gave a fairly detailed description of the series’ setting and premise in a new Lucasfilm profile in Vanity Fair. The article describes the show a “a mystery thriller set in a prosperous and seemingly peaceful era, when the galaxy is still sleek and glistening.”

 

The show takes place some 100 years before the events of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. Headland said the drive of the show is to explore how the galaxy arrived at the place it’s at in The Phantom Menace, when the Sith are poised to destroy the Jedi and the Empire makes its swift ascent. She explained:

A lot of those characters [from The Phantom Menace] haven’t even been born yet. We’re taking a look at the political and personal and spiritual things that came up in a time period that we don’t know much about. My question when watching The Phantom Menace was always like, ‘Well, how did things get to this point?’ How did we get to a point where a Sith lord can infiltrate the Senate and none of the Jedi pick up on it? Like, what went wrong? What are the scenarios that led us to this moment?

The article didn’t have much to say on the show’s casting (only that Amandla Stenberg is “reportedly” attached), but that premise sounds intriguing — and, thankfully, something very different from the world of The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett. It’s good to get some variety into the world of Star Wars.

The next Star Wars Disney+ series, Obi-Wan Kenobi, debuts on May 27.

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