The Master’s mask in The Acolyte was intentionally part Star Wars, part Donnie Darko

At the end of last week’s Acolyte, the Master showed up and proved to everyone that they mean business, effortlessly casting everybody on the Light side of the Force away with the flick of a wrist. This week, The Acolyte picks up right from there, showing us the true power of the Sith Lord (and surprised Sol doesn’t remember him... before finally revealing his identity). Of course, we didn’t need to see the Master in action to know how ferocious a Sith Lord they were. Their look told us enough.

As you might expect, that’s by design for Jennifer Bryan, the costume designer for The Acolyte. When designing the mask with Star Wars creature design veteran Neal Scanlan, they knew that it had to be in line with the aesthetics of the Star Wars Dark Side, while also feeling like something new.

“My department had many concepts because, for the character, everything has to look symbiotic; masks, cloak, everything has to work together,” Bryan tells Polygon, noting how grateful she is for the high degree of collaboration between Star Wars departments. The goal, as with many Sith, was simple: Communicate danger.

Image: Lucasfilm

“It needed to be threatening. It needed to be dark. And it needed to be something you never ever saw before, but there was something familiar about it.”

There was some hammering out of details; Bryan says earlier mockups emphasized different parts of the face, like the eyes. But to the final point, she drew from two specific sources: She gave the helmet a flare at the base of the neck, to evoke (who else) Darth Vader. “It will unconsciously register [with] the audience that this is a guy you need to watch your back with,” she says, naming him and Darth Maul as two points of Star Wars inspiration.

But the defining feature — that toothy, Venom-like grin — came from a different place altogether.

“Leslye [Headland, The Acolyte’s showrunner] says she thought about the bad bunny in Donnie Darko,” Bryan says. “There was something kind of grotesque about that. [...] I think the idea Leslye wanted was for you to get a sense of dread when [you] see this character up close finally.”

[Ed. note: The rest of this post contains spoilers for episode 5, “Night;” read on only if you want to know details from that episode, like the true identity of the Master.]

Image: Lucasfilm

That sort of communication of character was key even before we knew who the Master was. By the time we find out that Manny Jacinto’s Qimir is actually the Sith Lord the Jedi have been chasing all along, Bryan wanted us to get a certain sense of Qimir as a guy hiding in plain sight.

“The first time we see him [...] he basically hijacked that apothecary shop, and he’s wearing the shopkeeper’s clothes to kind of blend into the community. And he wears that for quite a bit,” Bryan says. “We didn’t want to give it away, that anything that he’s going to be anything other than himself. So when you first see him he’s [...] a little hustler.”

The goal was, even when he was in disguise, to be able to get a read of how devious he is: “You know, he’s wily, he’s slippery. He thinks on his feet.”