Carrie-Anne Moss has discussed the backlash to her characters’ death early on in Star Wars Disney+ show The Acolyte, insisting she had no idea it would be a big deal.
Episode 1, Lost / Found, launches straight into the action as a mysterious assassin (Amandla Stenberg) — later revealed to be Osha’s twin sister Mae — enters a bar to confront Moss’ Jedi Master Indara. Mae challenges Indara to “attack her” with all her strength and then forces her into a duel. Mae ends up striking Indara down, resulting in her death, which some fans felt was premature for a screen legend like Moss.
Series creator Leslye Headland has offered an explanation for the death, insisting it was essential for the show to throw down the gauntlet and highlight the threats faced by the Jedi.
“From a filmmaker perspective, I just felt like with the cold open, especially with a new story, that you just have to go hard,” Headland explained in an interview with GamesRadar last year. “You have to say the Jedi are going to take some Ls; you’re not going to know who the good guys and the bad guys are. And it’s going to feel very visceral.”
“Even if you already know it’s going to happen, it doesn’t have to be a big gotcha moment,” she added. “It just has to be a moment where the emotional and the physical — meaning the fights — melt together. Carrie-Anne, not just being an action legend, is also a phenomenal actress. She was able to play all those beats within the fight as well as, of course, her death scene.”
Still, fans took to social media as soon as the episode was shown to issue their complaints. Some were unhappy with the actor’s short-lived appearance, feeling the character did not get enough screen time. Others criticized her heavy inclusion in promotional materials, only to be cut early on.
Why yall make Carrie-Anne Moss get out of bed if you’re just gonna waste her like that #theacolyte pic.twitter.com/d58TJbacI1
— Boka MAX (Formerly “Boka”) (@BokaLaBoca) June 5, 2024
Now, speaking to Business Insider a year on, Carrie-Anne Moss revealed she knew her character’s fate when she signed on to play Indara, but admitted she underestimated the fan reaction to her death, and, looking back, feels she should have called it.
“The reaction to it from the fans, I kind of thought, ‘Wow, how did I not think of that?'” she said. “I mean, I serve the writers and the directors. It didn’t cross my mind. But afterward, when people made a big deal about it. I was like, ‘How did I miss that?’ I didn’t think it would be a big deal at all.”
Indara does appear in later episodes of the season in flashback form, but for many fans the damage was done. Indeed, Star Wars owner Disney canceled The Acolyte after Season 1, leaving a number of plot threads, chief among them the dramatic first appearance of Darth Plagueis in live-action form, dangling, perhaps never to be resolved.
Since the cancelation, a number of actors who appeared in The Acolyte have said they still hope for a Season 2. In December, Manny Jacinto, who played Qimir, said Darth Plagueis would have had a bigger role in further seasons of The Acolyte, but didn’t reveal too much because “we could come back.”
Sol actor Lee Jung-Jae said he was “quite surprised” to hear it wouldn’t get a second season, which Headland was thinking about even before Season 1 premiered. Others, including Stenberg, have said they weren’t shocked by the cancellation, however. “I’m going to be transparent and say that it’s not a huge shock for me,” she said. “I was in the bubble of my own reality, but for those who aren’t aware there’s been a rampage of vitriol that we’ve faced since the show was even announced. When it was still just a concept and no one had even seen it.”
Mother Aniseya actress Jodie Turner-Smith raised this issue too, calling out Disney for not doing enough for the cast who faced waves of racist slander online. “They’ve got to stop doing this thing where they don’t say anything when people are getting f**king dog-piled on the internet with racism and bulls**t,” she said. Jacinto is still eager to create more of The Acolyte though, calling Season 2 his life’s goal not long after its cancellation.
The Acolyte earned a 6/10 in IGN’s review. We said: “The Acolyte takes us to an earlier era of Star Wars than we’ve seen on screen with mixed results. Awkward dialogue and a small scope rob it of some of the series’ signature space magic, but these old-school Jedi are a thrill to watch in action.”
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
