The Acolyte showrunner Leslye Headland has denied episode 6’s unknown oceanic planet is Ahch-To (from The Last Jedi). That said, it might have deeper Star Wars Legends ties.
Spoilers ahead for The Acolyte up to this week’s sixth episode.
After a killer fifth episode, people are feeling better overall about The Acolyte, Disney and Lucasfilm’s latest live-action Star Wars series, yet it remains to be seen whether it’ll maintain the momentum and stick the landing. For now, episode 6 was the steamiest that Star Wars has been in quite a while (the Reylos are celebrating) and also teased a troubled past for Manny Jacinto’s Qimir aka the Stranger, the Sith (or Sith-like, we don’t know for sure) baddie that everyone and their mothers are thirsting over.
One of the biggest observations made by diehard Star Wars fans was that the ‘unknown planet’ (as presented by the show itself) where Qimir’s base of operations is located looked a lot like the sequel trilogy’s Ahch-To, where Luke Skywalker planned to live the rest of his days in solitude. Rian Johnson’s The Last Jedi was the movie that better fleshed out the planet (or at least Luke’s island) and its ecosystem, and this week’s episode of The Acolyte had more than a few winks to it.
Showrunner, creator, co-writer, and director Leslye Headland, however, has shot down those theories during a chat with Collider: “It’s not Ahch-To. I know it’s similar, and it was intentionally supposed to be similar in terms of terrain and feeling isolated and surrounded by water and less lush green and more rocky. But the idea is that Cortosis is mined on this planet, so I don’t think that’s the case with Ahch-To. Part of the reason this is his home base is that Cortosis is a very rare metal. I don’t think we say it explicitly in the show, but that’s a reason it’s not Ahch-To.”
With that out of the way, the key nugget of info here is the Cortosis connection she mentions, which the episode hinted at with a shot of an ore vein inside Qimir’s cave. For those who haven’t been watching the show, but are curious, or simply weren’t paying enough attention to the mechanics of what went down last week: Cortosis is what the villain’s helmet and gauntlets are made of, which allowed him to ‘break’ the lightsabers of his Jedi enemies due to the mineral’s unique ability of briefly shorting out light blades and absorbing blaster shots.
If we look deep into Star Wars lore, both current canon and Legends, we’ll learn about a planet called Bal’demnic that fits what we’ve seen of it so far, including “rich deposits of Cortosis ore” that “fell into the hands of Sith Lords Darth Tenebrous and Darth Plagueis.” While we’ve yet to confirm Qimir/the Stranger’s Dark Side identity (maybe he’s just a fallen Jedi on his own) and whether there’s a Sith Lord lurking in the shadows, Headland has repeatedly expressed interest in exploring some of Legends’ biggest Sith names and buried lore, so Bal’demnic kind of checks all the boxes in this case. Mind you, its name could change if it’s transitioning from Legends to the current canon, but we can’t think of a better candidate to explain where Osha and Qimir are right now.
