Acolyte showrunner Leslye Headland has made it clear she isn’t limiting herself to the confines of existing Star Wars canon. In setting the series a century before the prequel films begin, she looked through the old, now non-canon Legends timeline for inspiration. Bazil, the adorable rodent tracker introduced in Episode 4, may look like a new addition to the Star Wars universe, but he’s actually a Tynnan, a race introduced in the novel Han Solo’s Revenge all the way back in 1979.
This raises the question of whether any other seemingly new elements in The Acolyte actually have secret Star Wars histories. And with the series now half-over, the biggest question on everyone’s mind is the identity of Mae’s master. The identity of that creepy Sith may actually lie in a 20-year-old video game — and in a telling quote from Headland.
In the 2004 video game Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords, one of the available party members was a mysterious human named Kreia, who always seemed to have wise counsel but kept her own morality very grey. Eventually, Kreia reveals herself to be Darth Traya, a Sith Lord planning to establish her own Sith Order. Your supposed ally was actually the main villain, an incredibly powerful Sith who trained other Dark Side masters and could telekinetically control three lightsabers at once.
Notably, Headland told Den of Geek, "Darth Traya really stuck out to me as an inspiration,” implying The Acolyte could contain a similar twist. If so, the most likely candidate is none other than Qimir, Mae’s sidekick and supposed fellow Dark Side devotee.
In Episode 4 of The Acolyte, Qimir seemingly disappears only moments before Mae meets her master, a coincidence that’s just too convenient to ignore given this quote. That, combined with his strange warning to Mae about not reneging on her deal with her master, certainly makes him look suspicious. Maybe this is just a red herring, but with most other characters accounted for at the end of Episode 4, the only option for Mae’s Sith master is either Qimir or someone new.
Qimir secretly being a Sith has been the prevailing fan theory ever since The Acolyte’s two-episode premiere, but now that we’ve seen him vanish into thin air, it’s hard not to see Darth Traya’s inspiration in his character. With only four episodes left, we should soon learn just how much these two characters echo each other.
