The next Star Wars TV show, The Acolyte, will subtly rewrite one of George Lucas’ most important themes – in the best possible way. Star Wars has always been the story of light versus dark, but Lucas chose to make this explicit when he introduced the Chosen One prophecy in Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace. He revealed that Anakin Skywalker was destined to bring “balance to the Force.” But even Lucas’ concept of what this means seems to have evolved over the years, and the idea continues to change during the Disney era.

Speaking exclusively to Screen Rant, The Acolyte star Amandla Stenberg and showrunner Leslye Headland discussed the balance of the Force. Their view is a little more sophisticated and complex; they don’t place light and dark in opposition to one another, and they stress a degree of individualism rather than focusig on the cosmic aspects of the Force.

Amandla Stenberg: Star Wars of course, is about the balance of light and dark, and the relationship between light and dark. I don’t think that relationship is purely just oppositional; I think it’s so much more complex than that. That was inspired so much by Eastern philosophy, and that’s been a huge part of the legacy of Star Wars; this concept of yin and yang. I think Leslye wrote from that place, and when I thought about physically embodying that, it was a huge North Star for me.

Leslye Headland: That’s a really good question. I actually was thinking about a version of that when Amandla was giving her answer. There is this flux in her performance between good and bad, and a constant trying to balance two ends of the spectrum, if you will. I think that exists in all of us. I just think that when you watch a Star Wars piece of media, it’s usually embodied by certain characters or plot points or themes. But I think inside all of us is that level of duality; that imbalance or balance.

I would say if you keep watching the show, you keep watching people go from balanced to imbalanced, rather than from good to bad. I think that no one’s all bad or all good. There’s always a little bit of bad in the good and a little bit of good in the bad, and I think it’s all about going up and down that spectrum for these characters. So, don’t draw too many conclusions about people until you finish the season.

This isn’t quite how George Lucas originally understood the balance of the Force. He initially saw the dark side as a cancer within the Force, consuming it, but there’s some evidence his views changed a little; Star Wars: The Clone Wars introduced the Mortis gods, whose existence implies both light and dark are part of the Force.

The Acolyte’s Perspective Is Very Different To George Lucas’… But Makes Sense

This may be a different interpretation of the balance of the Force, but it fits perfectly with the way the term’s meaning has been defined in recent years. Back in 2020, Lucas’ protégé Dave Filoni gave his views on the balance of the Force, and he argued that every person both shapes and is shaped by the balance of the Force. To Filoni, the dark side is found in greed, desire for power, and fear; the light side is selflessness, living in balance, and overcoming fear.

Leslye Headland and Amandla Stenberg are simply taking this one step further. It sounds as though The Acolyte will essentially be a journey from balance to imbalance, showing how the dark side of the Force came to dominate by exploring the stories of individual Jedi. That makes this an essential prequel to the prequels themselves, revealing why the Chosen One was needed in the first place.