The witches of Brendok are a veritable smorgasbord of new Force powers. With the help of a Force vergence within an abandoned mine, they can create life and even turn into smoke. But in The Acolyte Episode 7, we see an eerie new Force ability: the power to not only read someone’s thoughts but to enter their mind and manipulate it.
This power allows the witches to turn Wookie Jedi master Kelnacca against his Jedi colleagues, which sets up the tragic chain of events that leads to Mae and Osha’s separation. But where does it come from? While there’s no record of this kind of power in Star Wars canon, one non-canon story does reveal a somewhat similar Force ability, and it could connect The Acolyte to a very important upcoming Star Wars movie.
Lost Legends is an Inverse series about the forgotten lore of our favorite stories.
Force Shadows in Star Wars
There are countless Force powers within Star Wars canon, but there are even more in Legends (the non-canon stuff that predated Disney buying Lucasfilm in 2012). This includes life-draining, camouflage, and even summoning demons. Some of these abilities date back thousands of years in the Star Wars timeline, to the beginning of the Jedi themselves.
In the Dawn of the Jedi comics, published in the early 2010s, fans learned about the origins of the Jedi. More than 25,000 years before Luke Skywalker was ever born, mysterious pyramid-shaped spaceships roamed the galaxy collecting Force-sensitive beings. This ragtag group settled on Tython (the planet where Grogu sent out his Force call in The Mandalorian Season 2). They named themselves the Je’daii after two words from the native language of the Dai Bendu monks: je (mystic) and dai (center).
But this benevolent usage of the Force couldn’t last forever. The Tython system was soon attacked by the Rakatan Empire. The Rakata were an evil, cannibalistic alien species who were taught the ways of the Force but used it in all the wrong ways. While not all of the species were Force-sensitive, the Rakata found a way around this by enslaving countless Force-sensitive beings. These figures, called Force Hounds, were used as scouts to find more planets powerful in the Force to continue the Rakata conquest.
To do this, the Hounds harnessed a power called Force Shadow, which is essentially the ability to project your mind across vast distances. One Force Hound named Xesh uses the power in Dawn of the Jedi to find Tython, but his projection is sensed by three young Jedi who eventually ally with him once he physically visits the planet.
Xesh would go on to become much more than just a Force Hound. Eventually, he becomes one of the Je’daii after they show him the power of the Light side of the Force. In return, he shows the Je’daii a special Rakatan weapon called a Forcesaber, a predecessor of the lightsaber. So in a way, without Force Shadow, the Jedi may have never adopted lightsabers as their weapon of choice.
James Mangold’s Star Wars Movie
So why are we talking about Force Shadows anyway? Well, if Force Hounds like Xesh had the ability to project their minds across great distances, then perhaps that’s what the witches of Brendok are doing. It’s not a perfect comparison, but it might explain their more mysterious abilities. Plus, considering that Xesh lived thousands of years before these witches, it would make sense that the specific application of the Force Shadow ability might have changed over a couple dozen millennia.
It’s also worth noting that James Mangold’s upcoming Star Wars movie is set to tell the story of the very first Jedi, which may borrow heavily from the non-canon Dawn of the Jedi comics. So we may see some actual Force Shadows in live-action Star Wars in the not-so-distant future. Maybe the witches of Brendok are even distant descendants of Force Hounds, which would explain their distaste for the Jedi in The Acolyte.
Then again, there’s no guarantee Mangold’s movie will borrow any ideas from the Dawn of the Jedi comics at all. But that’s the beauty of Star Wars Legends. It’s all just sitting there, waiting to become canon once again.
