Ever since the release of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, it seemed as if Disney wanted to brush the Sequel Trilogy under the carpet, with new material constantly overlapping during the Prequel or Original Trilogy era.
Interestingly, however, the recent episode of The Acolyte, Night, brought back a familiar and poignant motif from the Sequels—specifically one connected to Kylo Ren.
Is That Kylo Ren’s Theme in The Acolyte?
The Acolyte episode 5, titled Night, mostly consists of Qimir a.k.a. Darth Teeth taking out Sol’s entire squad of Jedi, but by the end of the episode he finds an injured Osha and decides to heal her wounds using the Force. Interestingly, while he does this, Kylo Ren’s theme plays for a few seconds, and this completely threw fans off.
As a refresher, here’s what Kylo’s theme from The Force Awakens sounds like. It plays around the time Poe is brought in front of him and he interrogates him:
A lot of fans consider Kylo’s theme to be his own version of The Imperial March, and it plays throughout his scenes in the Sequel Trilogy. By the time he transitions back into Ben Solo though, we hear a lighter version of it, in a major key, meant to denote he’s put the darkness behind him.
Is Qimir Setting Up the Knights of Ren?
During Qimir’s confrontation with Sol, he’s asked to say what he is, and Qimir responds by saying, “A Jedi like you would call me… Sith.” Though some can read that this is Qimir admitting his allegiance, some have pointed out that he never really says that he’s Sith himself.
This has led fans to speculate that Qimir could actually be the first Knight of Ren. He simply mentions the Sith because to him, the Jedi consider any Force user that isn’t part of their order a Sith; that’s why they were also against Mother Aniseya’s coven.
Based on what we know from the Sequel Trilogy, the Knights of Ren are not Sith, but they serve Dark Side users. In the canon, the Knights refer to the Dark Side as the "Shadow" and some of their members are also adept at using the Force, like Kylo Ren.
The Knights kind of got relegated to becoming lightsaber fodder for Ben Solo by the end of The Rise of Skywalker, but a lot of fans have hoped their lore would get built up with new material—and Qimir may very well be a response to that.
Perhaps The Acolyte can establish the Knights as always having been serving the Sith from the sidelines—only not as polished and organized as the Sith Inquisitors. This is all just speculation on the fans’ part for now, but reconnecting with lore from the ST could even be Lucasfilm setting the path for a new movie trilogy featuring a returning Rey Skywalker.
At this point, the main villain has already revealed his face, but fans are still convinced that there could be somebody more sinister behind the curtain. With three episodes of The Acolyte left, there's still plenty of room to find out exactly what happened on Brendok that night.
Catch new episodes of The Acolyte every Wednesday on Disney+.