Who Is the Sith Lord on ‘The Acolyte’? Leslye Headland’s Own Expanded Universe Knowledge May Provide a Clue

“Star Wars” is offering up one of the best mysteries it has in quite some while on “The Acolyte.” Who is the Sith Lord who calls himself just The Master and wears a ferocious mask studded with menacing teeth?

This is a franchise that loves a big reveal, after all. And it seems that all signs are pointing in one direction after Episode 4, titled “Day.” The clues to the Sith Lord’s identity abound, and all signs point to Manny Jacinto’s Qimir, a smuggler, fence, and fixer of sorts who’s been aiding acolyte Mae (Amandla Stenberg) with insights into what The Master wants. In previous episodes he gave her the poison that killed Master Torbin, and he’s generally just been “there,” dropping nuggets about The Master, such as that he “likes to collect people.”

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In Episode 4, Qimir accompanies Mae on her journey to the planet Khofar where the Wookiee Jedi Kelnacca is living a solitary life. He quickly gets caught in Mae’s trap when she decides to abandon him, and the last we see him is hanging upside down from a tree. But when the Jedi pursuing Mae arrive at that spot, he’s gone. And instead the Sith Lord greets them, floating down from the air with cold stillness. How could the Sith Lord not be Qimir?

There’s actually one bit of lore that creator and showrunner Leslye Headland dropped in an interview with Den of Geek that points in this direction as well. Talking to the fansite, she expounded on her love of Expanded Universe lore — the “Star Wars” mythos elaborated on in novels, comics, and videogames over several decades before Disney wiped the slate clean with its new canon in 2014. One character she highlighted in particular was the main villain from 2004 videogame “Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II — The Sith Lords.”

“Darth Traya really stuck out to me as an inspiration,” Headland said of the character.

Huh. Because Traya’s arc and eventual reveal as a Sith Lord is very similar to what’s happening with Qimir. In the game, Traya was essentially just a traveling companion for the main character. She’d drop nuggets of insight here and there in a quasi-mentorship capacity, much like Qimir does here — he certainly knows more about The Master than Mae.

Then of course, the big reveal in the game is that this traveling companion… is in fact a Sith Lord! And the primary antagonist you go up against. If this was in fact an “inspiration” to headline, the dynamics of that relationship feel very similar to what’s happening with Qimir.

There are still a few other contenders for the Sith Lord: Fans of ABC’s early 2010s series “Revenge” probably hope it’s Margarita Levieva as Mother Koril, who we’ve already seen certainly hated the Jedi when she was part of the coven of queer space witches who raised Mae; maybe it’s Rebecca Henderson’s Vernestra Rwoh, the Jedi Master already introduced in the “High Republic” series of books that set up the era in which “The Acolyte” takes place; or maybe, if Disney is really keeping this canon, it’s Darth Tenebrous, a Sith Lord name-dropped in “Rise of Skywalker” ephemera who, in earlier Expanded Universe tales, was the master of Darth Plagueis, who was the master of Palpatine, who eventually becomes Emperor. (Just writing that is like “The House That Jack Built.”)

Even now do the Sith have as their master plan to infiltrate the Republic and turn it into a fascist regime? Exposing themselves as boldly as they have in “The Acolyte” would seem at odds with that goal, but we’ve even seen in other Disney-era canon comics that the later Darth Maul tried to take on Jedi directly as a means of testing himself before the plan to turn the Republic into the Empire can really take hold.

But if Darth Traya was really “an inspiration” to Headland, we probably already know who the Sith Lord is.

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