【eroticized violence】

We're halfway through The eroticized violenceAcolyte, and I'm calling it: The mysterious Sith Lord Mae (Amandla Stenberg) has been serving is none other than Qimir (Manny Jacinto).

A former smuggler turned disciple of the Sith, Qimir acts as a handler of sorts for Mae. If she needs a poison to kill Jedi Master Torbin (Dean-Charles Chapman), he'll whip one up. If she needs advice on where to find Jedi Master Kelnacca (Joonas Suotamo), he'll guide her through the jungles of Khofar. If she needs someone to complain to about her cryptic Master's missions, Qimir is all ears. (He's also perfectly happy to drink and take naps while Mae is out murdering Jedi.)

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But Qimir's bumbling smuggler exterior — "Han Solo without the rizz," as Jacinto described him in an interview with Entertainment Tonight — has to be a front for something darker. Remember his chilling delivery of "You look exactly like her" when he first met Mae's identical twin, Osha (Stenberg)? Or how quickly he subdued Mae when she tried to fight him? There's clearly more to him than meets the eye.

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Plus, since Mae's admitted she doesn't know who is really lurking beneath that smiling Sith helmet, there's a good chance it's someone we've already met. Maybe even someone Mae already knows... like her partner in crime? After all, what better way is there for a Sith to check in on their acolyte than by shadowing their missions and getting a sense of how they work?

The "Darth Qimir" speculation has been swirling among The Acolyte's fans for a while now. Perhaps the biggest piece of evidence in favor of this theory is the fact that Qimir flat out quotes the first line of the Sith Code, telling Osha, "Peace is a lie."

Qimir? Is that you? Credit: Lucasfilm Ltd.

But The Acolyte's fourth episode adds further fuel to the flames of Qimir's potential Sith-hood. As he and Mae track down Kelnacca, Mae has a change of heart about her whole mission. She traps Qimir and continues alone, leaving him hanging by his foot from a tree.

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The episode ends with Mae, Osha, and the Jedi contingent — including Sol (Lee Jung-jae), Jecki (Dafne Keen), and Yord (Charlie Barnett) — converging on Kelnacca's house. But before they can all duke it out, darkness descends across the jungle. The Sith Lord has arrived, and the gang's all here to take this mysterious enemy on.

But guess who's not around? Qimir!

Sure, maybe he's still floundering in Mae's trap while his boss takes care of business. Ormaybe he waited until Mae was gone to use some Force tricks to escape. Then, I imagine he changed into his sick Sith getup using whatever the Star Wars equivalent of Clark Kent's phone booth is. Once that's done, he's ready to take down some Jedi and teach his impudent acolyte a lesson.

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The argument here really just boils down to: Have you ever seen Qimir and the Sith Lord together in the same room? And the answer, of course, is no. Because they're the same person! I'm (almost entirely) certain of it!

There is still the chance that Qimir is a red herring, and that I have fallen for it extremely hard. Maybe he's just an intense Sith fanboy. Maybe the Sith is someone entirely different: A new possibility is Mother Koril (Margarita Levieva), one of the Brendok witches whose body was conspicuously absent from the rest of the dead coven at the end of The Acolyte's third episode.

Yet I've written off a scrubby, disheveled guy as being the Big Bad once before, with Halbrand in The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. And look how that turned out! So with TheAcolyte,I'm trusting my instincts, and I'm ready to embrace Darth Qimir with open arms.

The Acolyte is now streaming on Disney+, with a newepisode every Tuesday at 9 p.m. ET.

Topics Disney+ Star Wars