The latest Disney+ Star Wars series, The Acolyte, has drawn raves from critics (including me!) and fans alike, and there’s one thing that kinda binds those of us who enjoy it: That it’s completely apart from the rest of the franchise because it takes place 100 years before the movies. The Star Wars franchise has so often made the galaxy feel very small, and this appears to be a nice break from that. But I’m very concerned that that’s about to change, based on a key piece of info we got during this week’s third episode, which told most of the story of how Mae and Osha were separated when they were kids.

Warning: This article will discuss some major spoilers from Episode 3 of The Acolyte.

This week’s episode reveals that the twins were raised in an all-female coven of Force witches who had been exiled from an unknown place and were living off the grid on a supposedly otherwise uninhabited planet outside of Republic space. Their mother is a zabrak called Mother Coral, and the clan is led by a human called Mother Aniseya–given those titles, and the presence of a zabrak, these are likely a sect of the Witches of Dathomir, who played a key role last year in Ahsoka, but this is never made explicit.

Mae and Osha were just approaching their coming-of-age ceremony, when a quartet of Jedi showed up to ask them a few questions–the Jedi apparently get weird when unaffiliated groups train children to use the Force, regardless of the context.

Coral, who is actually Mae and Osha’s mom, is concerned about the Jedi not just because they might kidnap Mae and Osha–she’s worried they’ll find out that Mae and Osha were created by Aniseya through the Force, conceived without a father. Just like Anakin Skywalker would be a century later.

We don’t know the specific implications of that reveal yet, but it’s the kind of thing that could very easily turn The Acolyte’s plot into a direct prequel to the films. And I’m not sure that’s gonna go well if that ends up being the case. But let’s consider the possibilities.

In the current canon, Anakin Skywalker’s birth is still a mystery–as far as we know right now, he really was conceived by the Force itself, unprompted. But the story was a little different in the Legends continuity. The story went that Emperor Palpatine’s old master, Darth Plagueis, had the ability to manipulate midichlorians to keep people alive for an unnaturally long time, and he also invented the essence transfer technique that allowed Palpatine’s spirit to survive the death of his body on the second Death Star. Plagueis had attempted to create a person as well, and was unable to do so–and he suggested that Anakin’s birth was the Force’s reaction to his machinations, or otherwise an accidental side effect.Come from Sports betting site VPbet