With three episodes left in the first season of The Acolyte, show creator Leslye Headland admits she isn’t quite done incorporating pieces of old-school Star Wars mythology from the Expanded Universe, aka Legends.
Legends, of course, is the name for Star Wars stories written before Disney bought the franchise and put everything under one big canon. Though these stories are no longer considered to have “officially” happened anymore, they have elements some creators are slowly bringing over into the canon. One recent instance: Grand Admiral Thrawn from Heir to the Empire appearing on Ahsoka.
This is happening on The Acolyte too and a big example came in the fifth episode of the show, “Night.” The episode introduced a metal called cortosis, a specialized ore that originated in the 1998 novel I, Jedi by Michael Stackpole and can briefly deflect a lightsaber. It’s the metal the Stranger’s helmet is made of and you can read much, much more cortosis and its history here. Speaking to Inverse, Headland explained why canonizing cortosis in The Acolyte was not taken lightly, and hints there is more to come.
“It’s a tricky thing because you respect George Lucas in the sense that you don’t want to weaken the power of a lightsaber,” Headland said. “It’s almost hallowed in that sense, not just within the series, but in pop culture. But cortosis was such a great new element, and I had always thought of it as such a cool thing to incorporate. [Lucasfilm story group’s] Pablo Hidalgo and I worked a lot on the machinations of it before we started designing it. It was very important that it be breakable, that it basically not be super hard. It’s why Jecki can get the helmet off him so quickly. It’s kind of a brittle thing. There’s also a limited resource of it, which is why he doesn’t have a whole suit of armor, and it only works for maybe a minute. We worked really hard on what it would look like, because we didn’t want it to look too powerful or too goofy. Pablo, [visual artist] Rob Bredow, and I talked a lot about it. So that’s the cortosis story, but the other Legends stuff we can talk about after the finale.”
The whole interview over at Inverse is fantastic and worth reading but this answer stood out for a few reasons. First, you can just tell how respectful Headland is to Star Wars mythology here. She thinks about it, she considers it, and she doesn’t make a decision lightly. Then there’s that tease at the end. More Legends to come? Is there anything in particular you’d like to see?
The Acolyte is streaming on Disney+ with a new episode coming Tuesday at 9 p.m. ET.
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