Even for a saga that dealt with sexuality and attraction in abundanceit is rare in Star Wars seeing people stripped down to their naked bodies in a way that invokes intimacy and desire. But “Teach/Corrupt,” the last episode of The Acolytedid just that last week when Osha found herself in the lair of the mysterious antagonist of the seriesthe Stranger – and she found herself seeing more of him than she had bargained for.
At the beginning of “Teach/Corrupt”, when Osha, having been forced to take her sister Mae’s place in a twin sister swap at the climax of the previous episode– awakens on a mysterious island, she is seen following Manny Jacinto’s Stranger across a beach to a nearby pool of water. Hiding behind a rock and having retrieved the Stranger’s lightsaber in case a fight breaks out, Osha and the audience watch as the Stranger calmly and quietly undresses himself, before walking naked into the water. When he lets Osha know he knows she’s there, as they talk, the Stranger continues swimming, before reappearing from the pool and walking towards Osha to get dressed: once again, completely naked, revealing the scars on his muscular body while presenting himself completely defenseless to her, as he begins to defend his own beliefs to his wary guest.
Although we, the audience, don’t see everything Osha sees – no full frontal nudity in Star Wars The idea we’re given is that she herself sees the Stranger literally naked in front of her, with a shiver of energy running beneath the scenes of Osha and the Strangers after that moment that plays with the seductive desire of both the Stranger’s power and his raw physicality. For showrunner Leslye Headland, that sensuality, and featuring the Stranger naked in it, was an important part of the episode’s intention. “Lucasfilm really believed in my vision. From a storytelling perspective, it had to happen. It had “He did like Steven Seagal did in the previous episode. How do you go from that to humanity? The only way to do it is to show him in such a vulnerable position, and it has to be visual,” Headland said. recently told Collider in a wide-ranging interview about the episode. “I can’t think of anything more vulnerable than someone holding a lightsaber over someone who’s that exposed. I don’t think so. I felt like he was so ruthless in the previous episode that he had to stand in front of her and say, like, ‘You can absolutely kill me,’ basically.”
According to Headland, it was important to contrast these scenes between Osha and the Stranger with what she had just seen of him the previous episode—mercilessly hacking his way through an entire team of Jedi like a silent monster—and to present that by having the Stranger completely naked (thus reminding us and Osha that yes, Manny Jacinto is a very handsome man when we’re not looking). skewer a padawan) was the visual the episode needed to show the change in their relationship. “The dynamic had to be what it is after what he did in (episode) 5. He can’t be this alpha male, intimidating dynamic — we know he’s capable of that since (the last episode) — but that can’t be his dynamic with (Osha),” Headland continued. “That wouldn’t make sense! We have to see this other side of him, and we have to see specifically the way he is with her. He never let Mae see his face, and he let her see him naked. You know what I mean? The character design was very, very intentional.”
Given the general family audience Star Wars Generally, nudity and titillation aren’t things we see a lot of onscreen, even as the franchise expands the stories it tells and offers more mature and adult material in its approach to violence, language, or, as is the case here, The Acolytea step towards at least the recognition that a kind of obvious sensuality exists in the galaxy far, far away, as much as it does in our own. Of course, The Acolyte always takes care to skirt around it and uses nudity not just as sexual tension, but as an act of physical vulnerability. But it’s still a step toward something we rarely see from Star Wars on screen – and he even gets to throw in a few lightsaber-hilt allusions, to boot.
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