The Acolyte: Redefining the Jedi Legacy in Star Wars Canon

There has been a lot of, let's put it more nicely than it deserves, discussion about where The Acolyte fits into the existing Star Wars canon. People have, again putting it nicely, debated whether or not the show is retconning the narrative (something that's been happening to Star Wars since the 1980s) by having a Sith appear about 100 years before The Phantom Menace. The appearance of Ki-Adi-Mundi has further complicated things since he is the Jedi Master on the council who tells everyone that the Sith haven't been seen in a millennia. There's a lot to unpack with this show but what if there is a different story at play than the story of the return of the Sith a century before The Phantom Menace? What if this show is actually about sticking the final nail in the Jedi's coffin without them even knowing it by having them adopt a more strict orthodox version of the religion of the Jedi?

Let's look back at the history of the Jedi and their relationship to the Sith in canon. According to the webpage for the eras of Star Wars, the Jedi were formally established during the Old Republic era and a schism developed from within that led to the formation of the Sith. Now (again, in canon so excluding Legends) there have only been whispers alluding to the Sith Empire that took over as a result of a war between the Jedi and the Sith but that led to the foundation of the Republic and the establishment of the Jedi as the sole peacekeeping force since they were considered the galaxy's saviors and they believed the Sith had been eliminated.

The events of the High Republic novels start to show the cracks in this system as the Nihil rise in the face of the Republic's plans to integrate the outer rim into the same laws and norms of the Republic. Considering we see the Republic in The Phantom Menace has not formally integrated most of the outer rim into the same laws, down to the fact that Tatooine still has slavery, it is clear that this effort was unsuccessful. The other intent of this incident with the Nihil and the Stormwall, the Blight, and the Nameless is that it begins to show the cracks in the Jedi. It showed the galaxy that, despite what the Jedi did in the past, they clearly cannot be everywhere at once and there are some threats that even they cannot protect against.

Now that the Nihil have been defeated, probably with some concession that the Republic would not go to deep into the outer rim and try to implement their policies there, and one of the key heroes of the Nihil conflict (Vernestra Rwoh) becomes a Jedi Master. When The Acolyte begins, she's the one who articulates the weakened position of the Jedi Order when she says they have to handle the investigation into who killed Master Indara internally without alerting the Republic because knowing that a Jedi has gone rogue or that there is someone else who can use The Force against the Jedi would just embolden their political enemies.

Now that we officially know that The Master/The Stranger is really Qimir and there is "something familiar" about him, it appears that there is some pre-existing connection between him and the Jedi. By the time this show ends, the Sith will be mostly (but obviously not entirely) defeated and the Jedi will sweep the events under the rug with internal shifts in the teaching of the Jedi to keep this from happening again. Since we see relationships and attachment are not outright banned during the High Republic (the relationship between Avar Kriss and Elzar Mann is an easy example), there has to be a shift as this would be banned by the time The Phantom Menace occurs. Also by the time The Phantom Menace occurs, the Jedi appear to be a lot more methodical in identifying and indoctrinating children who are found to be Force-sensitive.

The clearest explanation for this is that the events of The Acolyte will shift how the Jedi view their role in the galaxy and their own teachings. Regardless of how Qimir is related to the Jedi in the past, his legacy is going to be that he created the circumstances around which the Jedi cause their own destruction a hundred years in the future.