The Acolyte Introduces Star Wars’ Rey & Kylo Ren Replacements, 9 Years After The Force Awakens
Nine years after Rey and Kylo Ren were first introduced in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, the franchise has found their perfect replacements in Star Wars: The Acolyte. Rey and Kylo Ren’s intense, dramatic connection was the heart of the Star Wars sequel trilogy. Though the movies didn’t truly reveal how monumental their connection was until Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, their intrinsic power and bond played a pivotal role in the galaxy – not just in the fight between the First Order and the Resistance, but within the Force itself, too.
In The Acolyte’s two-episode premiere, it is strongly implied that Amandla Stenberg’s characters, Osha and Mae, are a Force Dyad. Osha and Mae are identical twins; when they were younger, their whole village was destroyed, and they were the only two survivors. While Osha was taken to the Jedi Order and trained as a Padawan before eventually deciding to leave, Mae was likely picked up by a Sith Master, trained as an acolyte, and ordered to target and kill certain Jedi.
In both of The Acolyte’s opening episodes, Osha experiences visions in which she sees and speaks to a younger version of Mae. These scenes are eerily reminiscent of ones in Star Wars: The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker, in which Rey and Kylo Ren can see, speak to, and even touch each other in their respective environments. Mae and Osha’s bond as twins and as Force-users makes them being a Force Dyad all the more likely.
Very little has been revealed about Force Dyads, though it seems that they represent an equal balance of the light and dark sides of the Force. Osha represents the light, Mae represents the dark, and the Force bonded them again once it was necessary, just like it did with Rey and Kylo.
Though Rey and Kylo Ren’s Force Dyad bond was undeniably compelling, their lives were utterly unconnected before the Force pushed them together. Mae and Osha’s dynamic is much more complicated as sisters and twins, sharing a past and a violent one at that. As twins, it makes sense for the Force to bond them together eternally within a Dyad.
One mystery The Acolyte has yet to solve is how and why Mae ended up as a Sith acolyte, working for a Sith Lord. If the Sith believed that having the two halves of a Force Dyad on their side would help them achieve their goals, then they’d have stopped at nothing to attain them. Star Wars: The Acolyte may have just introduced Star Wars’ second-ever Force Dyad.
The Acolyte episodes 1 and 2 are now available to stream on Disney+.