The Acolyte won’t be making a return to our screens, however its world is getting ready to dwell on in a plethora of new comics and books—beginning off with this week’s launch of Star Wars: Kelnacca, a brand new one-shot comedian from Marvel concerning the lifetime of the present’s mysterious wookiee Jedi. It’s a easy, quiet story, however one which provides an extra twinge of remorse to the present’s premature finish… in addition to Kelnacca’s.
Simply as he was in The Acolyte itself, Kelnacca is a taciturn, secondary determine even in his own comic—written by Excessive Republic stalwart Cavan Scott, and with artwork by Marika Cresta, Ariana Maher, and Jim Campbell. Fairly us attending to see his interiority and even method him as a singular determine within the highlight, a lot of the one-shot is framed by the storytelling as an alternative of one other Jedi, Yarzion Vell. First as an aged Jedi Grasp on his deathbed, after which by flashbacks to his time as a younger Padawan through the occasions of the Excessive Republic novel and comics sequence, Kelnacca tells a narrative concerning the Jedi and their method to loss, and most crucially how they transfer on from it.
After we first chronologically encounter Vell, it’s within the wake of the destruction of Starlight Beacon, a calamity that noticed his grasp killed within the aftermath. Simply as shortly as he’s left to try to grieve the lack of his grasp, Kelnacca swoops in with no phrase and picks issues up the place they left off: the chilly obligation of a Jedi is to compartmentalize these attachments at the same time as they’re fashioned, one connection breaking within the second just for a brand new one to be cast the following. It’s an attention-grabbing alternative, one that also frames Kelnacca a lot as he was within the present: there’s a distance, a lack of knowledge to what we all know of who this character actually is. We’re left to deduce issues within the silence, and in Vell’s perspective each recounting this story to his personal Padawan close to the top of his life, and when he was a younger boy likewise coping with the lack of a mentor determine.
That could be irritating to the form of reader who, maybe, may need most well-liked to see Kelnacca’s backstory laid out and categorized extra explicitly, however even the one actual “reality” we get about him on this story is much less a couple of singular piece of data to his character, although it does tie this story of attachment and grief again to Kelnacca’s untimely end in The Acolyte. Throughout Vell’s recollections, we study that he as soon as defined the tattooed markings on his head as a mirrored image of cultural practices from his species; an indication of respect to an important mentor determine is to ink their identify in runic script in your head to symbolize their half in your personal story. Simply as Vell did it as soon as for his first grasp—and he or she in flip did it for him—it’s revealed through the climax of the story, as Kelnacca comes to go to Vell simply as he passes on into the Pressure, that the shaved head and tattoos we see on him in The Acolyte are actually him honoring that very same apply for Vell.
It’s an attention-grabbing revelation for 2 causes, not only for its understanding of Jedi attachment—that it’s not this cut and dry thing—however for additionally the way it performs into Kelnacca’s eventual finish. All through the one-shot Kelnacca is introduced as somebody who is aware of when to come back in and be there when crucial: the way in which he swoops into Vell’s life, the way in which he ultimately knights him and lets him go as a Padawan, the way in which he returns to see him one final time, even the way in which he carries on that cycle simply as effortlessly by selecting up Vell’s personal Padawan as his subsequent scholar. It’s the reflection of the Jedi’s personal non secular apex on the time of the Excessive Republic, this concept that they’re open-minded about this concept of attachment, however it’s additionally one which mirrors the decline we see in them by the point of The Acolyte.
Traumatized by his half within the events on Brendok, Kelnacca’s solely alternative by the modern timeframe of the present is to be remoted and deserted by the Jedi, largely left to himself by alternative and by the Order’s personal reticence to succeed in out (partially, as a result of they by no means knew the complete image because of Indara and Sol’s lies, simply one other layer of institutional rot). And so, when Kelnacca is killed by the Stranger on Khofar, he’s left to die alone, unreflected on. There is no such thing as a one to hold Kelnacca’s story with them, save for Sol, who takes it to his own death quickly sufficient. The Order’s recalcitrance signifies that nobody was there to assist him, and solely arrived when it was too late and the state of affairs wanted to be was a clean-up. It’s an enchanting little kick to the intestine, and an attention-grabbing approach to reframe and reinforce the The Acolyte‘s bigger story concerning the Jedi within the course of.
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