Squid Game’s Lee Jung-jae to lead Star Wars series The Acolyte

The cast for Russian Doll co-creator Leslye Headland’s Star Wars series The Acolyte is coming together, and it continues to be pretty darn exciting. According to Deadline, the male lead in the show will be played by Squid Game breakout Lee Jung-jae, with him joining the previously cast Jodie Turner-Smith and Amandla Steinberg (who will apparently be the other main character).

You may have noticed a lot of “main character” and “male lead” talk in this news story, and there’s a reason for that: We don’t know anything about The Acolyte beyond its title, its cast, and a very vague premise/setting. The series is set in the “High Republic” era of Star Wars, one of the few wholly new creations that Disney has brought to the franchise since taking it over (that and the concept of a “Force dyad”), which means it takes place in the far, far distant past of the regular Star Wars stories, but not so far back that they didn’t have lighstabers and space ships and stuff—so it’s like House Of The Dragon in that sense, where it’s hundreds of years before Game Of Thrones but everything still looks basically the same.

Deadline says the show will be a “mystery-thriller” about a “galaxy of shadowy secrets” involving “emerging Dark Side powers in the final days of the High Republic era.” Based on the title, then, it might be about the first person to ever turn to the Dark Side… or maybe the second person, so there can be a Dark Side person and their Acolyte. And one of them is probably Amandla Steinberg and one of them is probably Lee Jung-jae. Maybe there will be a big moment where one of them is like “hey check out this new color I got for my lightsaber” and it’ll be red?

The Deadline story about Lee Jung-jae joining The Acolyte mentions that Lucasfilm boss Kathleen Kennedy has been aiming for a “diverse, A-list ensemble” for the show, so there might even be more cool casting announcements on the horizon.