The Acolyte Star Amandla Stenberg Confirms That Star Wars Rumor You Heard Is True

Contains spoilers for "Star Wars: The Acolyte"

It looks like those rumors about Amandla Stenberg's character — or, more accurately, characters — in "The Acolyte" are true. Instead of a single lead character, the show's all about two, a detail that the trailer for "The Acolyte" failed to mention.

"I play twins in the show. Their names are Osha and Mae and they kind of skew towards different sides of the force," explained "Bodies, Bodies, Bodies" star Stenberg to Electric Playground in May 2024. But the actor notes that there will be shades of grey and complexities at play. Stenberg then explained what each twin is in search of — Mae is looking for pure revenge due to a childhood incident, and Osha is a mechanic who ends up taking the fall for her twin's crimes, sending her on the run. Osha has no idea that Mae's still alive; they gave up training in the Jedi arts when she was a Padawan. Osha's journey toward the light side, Mae's toward the dark, and all the shades of grey in between is what the show is about.

Stenberg has said that Mae's journey was compared to two different filmic odysseys undertaken by two very different heroines when "The Acolyte" was pitched to them. 

Mae and Osha's journeys are apparently patterned on two very different film heroines' quests for revenge and individual power.

"So I got Leslye's [Headland, executive producer of "The Acolyte"] conceptual tagline that she's been sharing, which is that it was a mixture of 'Frozen' and 'Kill Bill.' Which immediately sucker-punched me, because 'Kill Bill' is one of my favourite movies," Stenberg told Empire Magazine. Stenberg also noted that Headland ended up screening "Kill Bill" for the whole cast and crew so they could get the story's vibe down. Since the bloody revenge caper is centered around Beatrix Kiddo's (Uma Thurman) quest for revenge after her former team kills everyone at her wedding, puts Beatrix in a coma, and steals her child, expect Mae's vendetta to be both very personal and well-ordered.

So where does that leave Elsa's rebellion against conformity and royal expectations to be herself? Might that comprise Osha's storyline? Audiences will have to wait and see when "The Acolyte" hits Disney+ on June 4.