Warning! This post contains SPOILERS for The Acolyte episode 4

Order 66 was not the definitive moment that made the newly christened Darth Vader a true Dark Lord of the Sith in the Star Wars timeline. While it was certainly the event that sealed Anakin Skywalker to his dark side fate, Vader still needed to go through a critical Sith trial. That was something he indeed completed in the aftermath of Revenge of the Sith, and is also being fleshed out in the new Acolyte series.

In Revenge of the Sith, Palpatine renames Anakin Skywalker as Darth Vader following the death of Jedi Master Mace Windu. Pledging himself to the dark side, Anakin is tasked with killing all the Jedi within Coruscant’s Jedi Temple during Order 66. Obeying his new master, Vader and the 501st Legion slaughtered countless Jedi Knights. However, both 2017’s canonical Darth Vader series and The Acolyte have proven that Vader had yet to become a true Sith Lord after Order 66.

Order 66 Sealed Anakin To The Dark Side, But He Hadn’t Yet Proved Himself

He Still Had To Kill A Jedi Without A Lightsaber

While clone troopers turned on their Jedi commanders and generals all over the galaxy, Vader was tasked to kill those still within the Jedi Temple. However, Vader was still wielding the blue-bladed lightsaber he’d built as Anakin Skywalker. As would later be revealed, this prohibited Vader from passing a critical Sith trial, one Palpatine would send him on the days following Revenge of the Sith. According to the ways of the Sith, a prospective apprentice must kill a Jedi without a weapon and claim their lightsaber’s kyber before they can be considered a true Dark Lord of the Sith in service to their master.

This is something that The Acolyte has further fleshed out. As seen in the first few episodes, Mae Aniseya (Amandla Stenberg) has been tasked by her dark master with killing four Jedi Masters, each of them tied to her dark past. Although Mae killed one with a knife and the second with poison, it’s been confirmed that she was supposed to be killing them unarmed, tying her mission with the trials of the Sith. It’s also been revealed that she could have also killed these Jedi with their own lightsaber, explaining her attempts to claim their weapons.

While it’s not yet been confirmed that Mae’s master is in fact a Sith Lord, he certainly looks the part. To that end, the similarities between Mae’s trial and Vader’s post-Revenge of the Sith do suggest that Mae was being tested to see if she could become a Sith apprentice. That said, it should be interesting to see if Mae will end up succeeding with the final Jedi she needs to kill by defeating them without a weapon, seeing as how the third (the Wookie Jedi Kelnacca) was surprisingly killed by her master.

How Anakin Skywalker Proved Himself Worthy To Be A Sith Lord

Facing Jedi Master Kirak Infil’a

As seen in 2017’s Darth Vader series from Charles Soule and Giuseppe Camuncoli, Vader found the self-exiled Jedi Master Kirak Infil’a in the aftermath of Revenge of the Sith, a taker of the Jedi Order’s Barash Vow which meant that there weren’t any clones nearby to kill him during Order 66. Flooding the nearby village that had been under Infil’a’s protection, Vader used the Force to snap Kirak’s neck while he desperately tried to save the innocent. As such, this proved Vader’s worth as a Sith Lord by successfully killing a Jedi without a weapon.

Vader’s victory also set him up to fulfill the final part of his Sith apprentice trial. Claiming Kirak’s lightsaber, Vader took the kyber within and made it bleed, corrupting its power with the dark side of the Force for his first red lightsaber as a true Sith. To that end, it will be very exciting to see if The Acolyte might also feature a kyber-bleeding scene, an event that would be a live-action first for the Star Wars franchise.