Favorite Characters: Qimir (The Acolyte)

*Qimir-related spoilers.*

When news about The Acolyte was first coming out, I remember being intrigued by the cast list. And of that interesting mix of names, Manny Jacinto was the one that caught my eye the most. I always enjoyed him as Jason on The Good Place, where he did a great, hilarious job playing a very particular character type. I was really curious to see what sort of role Star Wars had in store for him.

To that end, in the early episodes of the show, I immediately sat up and took notice when Qimir first appeared onscreen. A smuggler who’s working with Mae, Qimir presents right away as an intriguing presence. He talks with Mae about her masked Master, helping her talk through ideas for how to get revenge on the Jedi who upended her life as a child while also fulfilling the seemingly impossible assignment her Master has given her. He seems a little shiftless, pretty self-serving, and from his introduction, more thoughtful than he lets on.

I know I wasn’t the only one who speculated that Qimir was really Mae’s Master under the mask, but one of The Acolyte’s major coups is in its ability to reveal this fairly unsurprising twist in an absolutely stunning way. Episode 5 is a key turning point in the season, the moment where the final element of the series clicked into place, and that was Qimir unveiling himself as the Stranger. (Since we haven’t heard a true name for him, I’m going to keep calling him Qimir, just because I like it better than “the Stranger.”)

In the first half of the season, Mae’s Master feels a bit like a standard creepy/evil Dark Side baddie to me. I thought the teeth on the helmet looked silly—although I did love the nickname “Smilo Ren”! In these episodes, I was most interested in his insistence that Mae kill one of these four Jedi without a weapon as her final “lesson.”  But in episode 5, even before the unmasking, I went all in on this guy. I’m obsessed with his raw, badass, no-rules lightsaber fighting, and I made my peace with the helmet when I realized it was made of material that could temporarily short out lightsabers. Headbutting a Jedi’s lightsaber with your Cortosis helmet is so freaking metal, I love it!

And when the mask comes off, even though I was pretty much expecting it to be Qimir, it’s such a moment. Between the excellent writing, Jacinto’s superb performance, the cooooool design, and the incredible fight choreography, it’s immediately clear that this is a character to be reckoned with. Gone is the goofy/clumsy smuggler, replaced by a brutal Dark Side user who will calmly explain why he just killed all your friends. I love that he feels so entirely different from the character we met at the start of the series: the way he moves, the tone of his voice, his carriage and confidence. I love that he smiles when Sol is holding a lightsaber to his throat. And I love that, for all his danger and coldness, we still get these little moments of dark humor from him—humor that sounds/feels nothing like Smuggler!Qimir’s.

But the more we get to know Qimir, the more we understand how much of a chameleon he can be. The next time we see him, he’s tended to Osha’s wounds and presents an almost sympathetic figure as he attempts to draw her to the Dark Side. The franchise has always talked about the Dark Side’s seductive power, but we haven’t traditionally seen that with actual seduction, complete with abs, yearning looks, and domesticity.

There’s a lot we don’t know about Qimir, but I get the sense that he’s learned to be whatever he needs to survive. For all that, however, I don’t think any face he presents is entirely an act. He is cold and dangerous, just like he’s also warm and empathetic, just like he’s also angry and strategic. And yeah, I would bet that part of him is also clumsy and goofy—I love the speculation that that’s what he was like as a padawan! He’s almost always working an angle or an agenda, but within that, it somehow feels like there’s still a lot of honesty in how he relates to other characters.

He's so fascinating to me. Qimir definitely leapt onto my Favorite Antagonists list, and one of the major reasons fans were clamoring for a season 2 was so we can learn more about him (ugh, stupid Disney.) Everything about this character is just firing on all cylinders—I feel lucky that the actor I most wanted to see in the show wound up with such a compelling role!