Acolyte Actor Says Anakin Blew Up the Death Star… Twice

Television

I’m not going to get into some facetious preamble that pretends anyone had faith in The Acolyte, the new Star Wars series coming to Disney+ next week. But sometimes, something is stupid enough to shock you even when it doesn’t quite surprise you. Some of the show’s stars are making the press rounds right now, and Charlie Barnett, who plays Yord Fandar (whatever you say, guys), got a pretty important Star Wars fact wrong not once but twice, both times while defending his earlier comments about there being no definitive good or evil in the Star Wars universe. Specifically, Barnett referred to Anakin Skywalker blowing up the Death Star. Here’s the first one, courtesy of Jonas J. Campbell, a reporter for That Park Place:

Bless. Your. Heart. pic.twitter.com/kQ8mDffSs7

— Jonas J. Campbell (@JonasJCampbell) May 31, 2024

Okay, maybe he simply misspoke. Except, he did it again, and this one (courtesy of Gary/Nerdrotic) is much worse:

He says it AGAIN
"Anakin blowing up the Death Star"#Acolyte pic.twitter.com/EKzodz3mGv

— Nerdrotic (@Nerdrotics) May 31, 2024

I say the second one is worse because he says “Anakin” in contrast to Darth Vader, and not in a deep, thoughtful, “they were actually two different people” type of way. Barnett is confusing Anakin with Luke, but to such an extent that he even mentions Anakin’s alias –  one of the most well-known Star Wars characters and movie characters in general – in the same sentence. Now, I know actors aren’t the brightest crayons in the box, but you’d think after he did it once, a Lucasfilm person would correct him. Aside from that, he and Dafne Keen are wearing different clothes in the videos, and Keen’s hair is styled differently, plus they’re with different people in the third seat (I’m not sure who the woman in the first one is, but the guy in the second is Manny Jacinto, who plays Qimir on the show), so these interviews were almost certainly conducted on different days, or at least one was much later in the day than the other. He had plenty of time to either realize his mistake or have someone else point it out to him. And that’s why this annoys people so much; it’s just another example of how nobody attached to Star Wars right now cares about Star Wars. Luke Skywalker destroying the Death Star and Anakin Skywalker being Darth Vader are pretty important Star Wars plot points; one slip-up is a goof that could happen to anybody, but it’s something he appears to do consistently while trying to make an idiotic point about something he clearly doesn’t understand, and nobody at the company cares enough to correct him, if they even know he’s wrong. (“Blow up the Death Star? Didn’t Rey do that?”) It helps explain what’s been going on with Star Wars under the current regime, though.

By the way, Kevin Smith made this argument via Randal Graves in Clerks, but it was a joke, and it was much more thoughtful than what this guy is trying to say. (And Dante identifies the Death Star’s destroyer correctly – both of them.)