“The Acolyte” creator reacts to 'powerful, menacing' cliffhanger

Evil has arrived.

Warning: This article contains spoilers about Star Wars: The Acolyte episode 4.

The Acolyte keeps upping the body count, as another Jedi was slain on this week’s episode of the Disney+ Star Wars series. And that shock was quickly followed by another — the appearance of Mae’s mysterious masked master.

The action all ended up on the planet of Khofar, where the Wookiee Jedi Kelnacca (Joonas Suatamo) had been living in solitude with no communication with the outside world for more than a year. The Wookiee was next on Mae’s (Amandla Stenberg) Jedi hit list, as she traveled to the planet with shady apothecary Qimir (Manny Jacinto) to take out her latest victim. But then, having a change of heart after seeing her twin Osha (also played by Stenberg), Mae trapped Qimir and ran off to surrender for her crimes and turn herself into the Jedi with the hope of being reunited with her sister.

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But when Mae arrived about 10 minutes later at the Wookiee’s hut, she discovered that Kelnacca had already been slain — a sizzling lightsaber burn across his chest. She knew then that her unseen master had beaten her there.

Meanwhile, Osha has accompanied her former Jedi Master Sol (Lee Jung-jae), Jedi Knight Yord (Charlie Barnett), and Padawan Jecki (Dafne Keen) to Khofar in the hopes of finding Mae. Instead, they came face to face with Mae’s master — who creepily floated down from the sky, ignited a red lightsaber, flicked Osha to the side, and then hurled a massive dust storm and the approaching, lightsaber-drawn Jedi as the screen then cut to black.

Related: The Acolyte star Dafne Keen recalls lightsaber training mishap that led to a hotel evacuation

It was quite the cliffhanger to end on, right as the show’s biggest battle appeared ready to commence, especially with a mysterious unknown entity at the center of the action. What can we make of this masked menace descending from the sky? We asked creator Leslye Headland exactly that.

“I find him to be very scary,” Headland tells Entertainment Weekly. “I think that because this is a show about the bad guys, he is incredibly powerful, menacing, all of those things.”

That’s pretty evident by the fact that he took down a Wookiee Jedi with apparent ease. (Perhaps too much ease: If we don’t get to see Kelnacca wield a lightsaber in flashbacks at some point, that will be a bummer of epic proportions. Although the Kelnacca loss was at least partially offset by the introduction of another inarguably amazing character in Bazil the tracker.)

Related: How The Acolyte brought the Wookiee Jedi Kelnacca to life on screen

Headland is mum on possible additional flashbacks, but does tease that we will start to get some answers regarding Mae’s unknown master. “You are going to get, I would say, drawn into his world a bit, and it'll be a little different.”

As for the excitement of that dramatic cliffhanger, Headland promises it is just the beginning of the action as we now head into the second half of season 1. “Hopefully it just continues down that road for people,” says Headland. “You have to keep watching the show, and I think the audience will continue to be excited by where we end each episode.”

And it seemingly all begins with a big Sith vs. Jedi battle on Khofar.

Additional reporting by Devan Coggan.

Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly.