Leslye Headland Defends Her Decision to Make Osha & Mae’s Origin Similar to Anakin’s: “You might be missing the forest for the trees”

This week’s episode of ‘The Acolyte’ brought some new information to the live-action canon of the Star Wars franchise. We’ve gotten some expanded information regarding Force Vergence and we’ve finally learned the true origin of the twins Osha and Mae.

We’ve speculated before that their origin was different than that of Anakin, they were presumably created by the Coven’s twisting and manipulation of the Force. As it turns out we were wrong and they are truly oddly similar to Anakin.

Fans have been afraid that Osha and Mae will be Anakin ripoffs ever since the famous sentence “they have no father” was uttered. It’s unclear whether the girls are the Vergence or Vergence was manipulated merely to create them, still, their origin as “the chosen ones” of the High Republic Era is clear. Something I was hoping that the show wouldn’t lead into.

The manner in which twins were discovered also feels like the movie ripoff, Qui-Gon Jinn states that he found vergence centering around a child (Anakin) and he turned out to be really special, with his status as the chosen one affecting every single life in the Galaxy, for better or the worse.

Now fans criticized this aspect of the story, and in her latest interview with Nerdist, Leslye Headland addressed it and explained it in a bit more detail:

That’s a good question. I haven’t been following the coverage of the show enough to really answer that. I did hear that there was a bit of a dust up in terms of the girls stepping on Anakin’s creation storyline line, which I had mixed feelings about.

It’s probably for another deep dive to kind of talk about that. I would say that you might be missing the forest for the trees in starting an argument about that, instead of seeing that this is a power that could have existed in the world way before Anakin. And that power was being pursued by someone. So it’s not an issue of “paying attention to,” but I did hear about that, and I just think people aren’t taking into account the era that we’re in.

f there’s anything we know about the fifth in Sith in sequels or prequels, one of the things we do know about them is their quest for these abilities like we’re seeing Aniseya being able to execute with the twins.

It just seemed to me any power like that that does not belong to one faction. It is not something that Aniseya was born with either. It’s a power that belongs to the Force. And that it’s up to the practitioner to be able to understand and figure out and pull apart how do you harness that particular power.

I understand what people were complaining about, or were maybe confused by, but I think they’re sort of paying attention to the wrong aspect of it. They’re not seeing the long game of the lineage of the Sith pursuing any sort of evidence of this type of power in the galaxy and then tunnel visioning toward it. And improving upon it. Again, if the girls are a test run, being able to improve on what that power is and being able to perfect it, that would be something if I were a Sith I would be interested in.

Now, obviously, there is no time in the first season to explore the girls’ origin story further and clear up how exactly it’s different or similar to Anakin’s, but perhaps the final episode, which is airing next week, resolves at least some of the doubts.

What do you think? Let us know in the comments below!

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