A lot of potential was left on the table when The Acolyte was shockingly scrapped after just one season—but one of the biggest losses was the chance to get more from Manny Jacinto’s mysterious masked Sith, Qimir, aka the Stranger. But while we’re still mourning what might have been going forward, we can get a picture of how we got there this week in the form of a veritable treasure trove of Acolyte artwork.
Releasing this week from Abrams Books, The Art of Star Wars: The Acolyte (penned by Kristin Baver) is jam-packed with over 200 pages of artwork and interviews with the crew behind the Star Wars streaming series, fleshing out early ideas for the show and how it brought the era of the High Republic from the pages of books and comics to live-action.
There is, of course, plenty of work dedicated to characters like twin sisters Mae and Osha, the Jedi we meet across the series from Vernestra Rwoh to Sol and his apprentice Jecki, and much more insight into both what The Acolyte could have been and, perhaps most interestingly, where it could’ve been going should it have continued. But one of the most fascinating sections of all fittingly covers the most fascinating figure of them all in the Stranger—giving us looks at not just how the design team eventually settled on his iconic cortosis-imbued grinning helmet, but ideas for where the Stranger could’ve gone, from his potential origins as the first of the Knights of Ren to what could’ve happened to the other mystery player in the shadows of his island home, Darth Plagueis.
“In early designs, we toyed with the idea of the mask being reminiscent of the Bith species. This initial idea evolved to what we see on screen,” concept artist Nick Tyrrell says of the Stranger’s final masked form in io9’s exclusive preview of The Art of Star Wars: The Acolyte, which you can see below. “The feeling we wanted this mask to give off is that the Stranger is basically a Sith on a budget—he has had to make this mask himself from cortosis metal and then welded it into shape to the best of his abilities, with limited resources.”
“Leslye [Headland, Acolyte showrunner] wanted it to feel like a sensory deprivation helmet with an uneasy smile,” Tyrrell continues. “By creating the shape from his breathing apparatus, which stretches across the center, you get a sinister smile without it feeling like the Stranger made it this way on purpose.”
Check out even more insight into the origins of the Stranger in our preview below.
The Art of Star Wars: The Acolyte hits shelves February 3 and is available for purchase where all good artbooks are sold.
Excerpt from the new book The Art of Star Wars: The Acolyte (Abrams) by Kristin Baver, on-sale February 3 © & TM 2026 Lucasfilm Ltd.
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