Towards the end of the first season, The Acolyte threw many big reveals at us, including the first onscreen appearance of Darth Plagueis. He appears only briefly and says nothing, simply spying on Osha and Qimir from afar. This is plainly meant to set up the next season of the show (assuming that Disney renews it, of course), but what we have seen so far makes one thing crystal clear: this show has bungled the first appearance of a Star Wars character fans have waited nearly two decades to see.

Plagueis

To understand my frustration with how The Acolyte portrayed Darth Plagueis, it’s important to review what little we know about the character. He is first mentioned in Revenge of the Sith by Chancellor Palpatine, who claims this dude could use the Force to both create life and cheat death.

Aside from these legends and the fact that Plagueis was once Palpatine’s master (betrayed and murdered by his student, which is the Sith way), we don’t know anything about Plagueis except that he was a Muun.

Now, fans of The Acolyte who have a bookshelf full of old Star Wars novels are likely screaming at me that we know plenty about this character thanks to works like James Luceno’s Darth Plagueis novel.

However (and don’t shoot the messenger if this is how you find out), all of the old Expanded Universe content has been removed from canon by Disney with all the speed of Luke Skywalker making moves on his sister. There are new comics and novels that are part of Disney’s new canon, of course, but modern authors haven’t really told us much about this ancient Sith Lord.

Plagueis Revealed

That makes his appearance in The Acolyte that much more important…not only is this the first time we have seen Darth Plagueis onscreen, but this is the first time we’ve learned anything substantial about this character in the current canon since the prequels ended.

However, all we really learn is that the character was alive a century before The Phantom Menace (not much of a surprise). Oh, and that the only way he gathers info about powerful Force users is to just creep around and forego technology in favor of what Commander Adama might call “mark one eyeball.”

Qimir’s Intro Was Better

There’s nothing necessarily wrong with how The Acolyte visualizes Darth Plagueis–he’s a Dark Side Muun guy, and he certainly looks like a creepy alien in a dark cloak. But it’s very disappointing that this is his big reveal: spying on Qimir and his new would-be apprentice, presumably because he wants to learn some more juicy Force secrets.

Given the context of his one scene, it’s impossible to ignore the frustrating fact that franchise newcomer Qimir actually had a much cooler introduction in the show as a mysterious evil figure who would come to dominate the entire season.

A Marketing Stunt

Compared to villains in The Acolyte like Qimir and even the Force witches of Brendok, Darth Plagueis is just sort of there, doing nothing to really advance the story or reveal anything about himself other than the fact he’s been a sneaky creep for a very long time.

Honestly, it feels like the character was added to the episode during editing just to get fans to talk about the show. That strategy worked, mind you (it’s why you’re reading this article, after all), but it seems very cheap to turn this long-awaited character introduction into nothing more than a marketing stunt.

It Would Be Great To Be Wrong

As usual, I’d love to be proven wrong here–The Acolyte showrunner Leslye Headland has previously hinted that she has plans for integrating Darth Plagueis into future seasons, so this may just be foreshadowing some cooler stuff in season 2.

As it stands, though, the show took the character fans were most eager to see and turned him into nothing more than a creeper obsessed with stalking hot people. Honestly, if we really wanted to see that, we’d just turn off the TV and go search a few Star Wars subreddits to get our fix.