'Wayseeker' Upends A Key Assumption Made By Fans After 'The Acolyte'

Star Wars

May 8

In the wake of The Acolyte’s finale, there was copious discussion online about an underlying mystery playing out in the background of the season. It seems evident that Qimir, or whatever his true name is, was once a Padawan to Jedi Master Vernestra Rwoh.

Something happened between the pair, and it appeared Qimir was assumed dead. In the final episode of the show, Vernestra realizes that Qimir is still alive, and the series ends with her visiting Jedi Master Yoda. With the release of The Acolyte: Wayseeker, we now have a bit more information about the Qimir-Vernestra relationship, and we think it’s important to highlight what this novel tells us.

WARNING: This article contains spoilers for The Acolyte: Wayseeker.

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We’ll get right to it: Vernestra did not hide what happened with Qimir from everyone. In a discussion between Vernestra and Jedi Master Yaddle about two-fifths of the way through the novel, Vernestra notes she’d accept greater responsibilities in the Jedi Order so long as the Jedi don’t expect her to train another Padawan. This novel confirms that Vernestra has had several Padawans over the years, but the following pause, and request by Vernestra to Yaddle to not “bring it up” would seem to confirm that others do know what happened with Qimir.

Yaddle then comments “The failures of our students are not our own.” though Vernestra notes her own belief that failures in a teacher’s students might relate more to the failure of the mentor than those they teach. An comment made a few chapters earlier by Vernestra about her most recent Padawan affirms the strong guilt she has about whatever happened with Qimir, but it seems Yaddle puts more of the blame onto Qimir for the events that led to the rift with his teacher, the Order, and his apparent death.

This information puts a strong nail in the coffin to several fan theories regarding the Qimir-Vernestra relationship which posited that Vernestra hid Qimir’s fate until she went to speak with Yoda at the end of the show. Another, though less common, idea was that the antagonism between the two characters was something instigated by Vernestra, and she hurt Qimir on purpose, leaving him for dead afterward out of a vendetta or vengeance. This also seems unlikely given the insights Wayseeker has offered us.

Using the information we’ve learned, what might have happened with Qimir? While he might view what he told Osha as true, he has still fallen to the Dark Side, and he fully intends to manipulate her. We think there is a stronger likelihood that as a Padawan, he was uneven in his commitment to the ways of the Jedi. The High Republic has shown us the cost of when light-siders dabble with the Dark Side, most obviously with Jedi Padawan Klias Teradine when he sought out and made contact with a Dark Side relic that led to his death as Ty Yorrick defended herself from his attacks.

It may be that Qimir, or whatever his true name was, engaged in similar activities, perhaps repeatedly, and by the time Vernestra confronted him, it was already too late. She had failed him, failed to see the rising threat, and had to fight this foe to the Jedi who perhaps now idolized the Sith or believed they had better ideas. In whatever fight that followed, perhaps over some great chasm or in terrible chaos he had wrought on innocent lives, he was bested, and assumed dead, his “dead body” left to be consigned to destruction, or his life fading from Vernestra’s ability to sense and her ability to physically see him.

Regardless of how the events exactly played out, it is clear some other Jedi knew the fate Vernestra believed Qimir suffered. They helped ease Vernestra’s pain, comforting her with the belief she had not failed, and instead lay the blame on Qimir. Yaddle is not a character we see making major mistakes in the stories we have of her in canon, indeed, she has great compassion and understanding.

As a woman who offered Dooku a path back to the light despite the heart of darkness he’d moved toward, she more than anyone might have been key to helping Vernestra with whatever event occurred involving Qimir. If anything, Yaddle should have been the one Vernestra went to speak with at the end of The Acolyte! But, we have the scene we have, and this book helps us learn figures like Yoda almost certainly already knew about Qimir and his assumed fate before Vernestra likely revealed her former Padawan was still alive in that fateful visit to him in the final moments of that great show.

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