The Acolyte Showrunner Explains How Elden Ring Inspired New Star Wars Villain

Ethan Dean

❘ Published: 02/07/2024 at 06:23:34

The Acolyte showrunner Leslye Headland has revealed that the series’ intimidating villain actually has his roots in Elden Ring.

Spoilers for one of The Acolyte’s major reveals ahead.

The Acolyte’s mysterious villain, “The Stranger,” was finally revealed to be the laid-back merchant Qimir. For some viewers, this came as a shock, while some theories had already identified Qimir. What should surprise everyone is that a major aspect of the character was inspired by Elden Ring.

In an interview with Inverse, The Acolyte showrunner Leslye Headland explained how Elden Ring influenced the series’ main antagonist.

Headland revealed that it wasn’t one of the iconic Demigods from FromSoftware’s latest Soulsborne that had an impact on Qimir, but rather its community of players. Specifically, the unarmored Tarnished who pride themselves on their ability to dodge.

Qimir’s lack of armor was initially a topic of debate behind the scenes, but Headland cleared things up.

“As soon as I said he didn’t have armor, everybody lost their minds,” the showrunner told Inverse. “[They were]like, ‘How can you not have armor?’ I was like, ‘Why wear armor if you’re not going to get hit?’”

“It’s like the Elden Ring costume. The Elden Bling. When you summon people, you always summon people who aren’t wearing anything, and it’s like, ‘These people are crazy,'” she explained.

After seeing Qimir single-handedly take on the group of Jedi sent to hunt him down in the latest episode of The Acolyte, those inspirations are more than obvious. His insane agility has led to some mind-blowing fight choreography.

The Acolyte has had an interesting run, with fans getting a lot of critical acclaim throughout the first five episodes. Some chapters have been criticized as “bad,” while the most recent one has been positively received as “the darkest Star Wars ever.”

Elden Ring’s new Shadow of the Erdtree DLC has had a bit of a parallel journey. Initially, the difficulty irked some players, with streamers like Asmongold saying it was “too hard to be fun.” However, once the DLC was complete, the content creator did a backflip and declared, “It’s a 10.”