The Walt Disney Company continues to use Jordan Peterson as a villain in its various IPs. The latest is having the Sith character played by Manny Jacinto quote Peterson at the end of the most recent episode.
Jordan Peterson speaking with attendees at the 2018 Student Action Summit hosted by Turning Point USA at the Palm Beach County Convention Center in West Palm Beach, Florida. Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore from Peoria, AZ, United States of America, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Jacinto’s Qimir character says at the end of the episode, “Even in the revelation of our triumph, we see the depth of our despair.”
This is a paraphrase of a quote from Jordan Peterson. During an appearance on The Diary of CEO with Steven Bartlett podcast. Peterson said on the podcast, “Wherever I go in the world people come up to me and they often have a pretty rough story to relate. It’s an awful thing because you see, even in the revelation of their triumph, the initial depth of their despair.”
The Stranger (Manny Jacinto) in Lucasfilm’s THE ACOLYTE, season one, exclusively on Disney+. ©.
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Manny Jacinto attempted to explain the line in an interview with Entertainment Weekly, “I think it’s essentially our introduction into the third act. It’s basically summing up everything that you thought you knew in these first episodes.”
He added, “Now we’re going into completely different territory. Now it’s a different world that we’re going to introduce you to, and not just a new story, but new motivations for all of the different characters.”
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA – MAY 23: Manny Jacinto attends the launch event for Lucasfilm’s new Star Wars series The Acolyte at the El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood, California on May 23, 2024. (Photo by Jesse Grant/Getty Images for Disney)
Headland shared her own comments with Entertainment Weekly as well, “My co-showrunner Jason Micallef wrote that line, and I always thought he was talking about himself, and that is something that’s going to end up coming up for the two of them in the next episode — there is no triumph without despair. There is no good without bad. There is no light without dark.”
She added, “His philosophy is that it seems that his existence is meant to balance a particular amount of good that exists in the galaxy. His history and his philosophy and his experience in the world is something that he will be able to share with Osha, which is not as simple as “I’m the bad guy, and the Jedi are the good guys.”
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA – MAY 23: Leslye Headland attends the launch event for Lucasfilm’s new Star Wars series The Acolyte at the El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood, California on May 23, 2024. (Photo by Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images for Disney)
As noted above, this is not the first time a Disney subsidiary has used Peterson as a villain. Activist Ta-Nehisi Coates used Peterson as inspiration for his take on Red Skull during his run on Captain America.
In Captain America #28, Coates and artist Leonard Kirk depict Red Skull as a YouTuber and blogger with video and articles titled “Ten Rules For Life,” “Chaos and Order,” “Karl Lueger’s Genius,” and “The Feminist Trap.”
The videos and articles are clearly inspired by Peterson’s book 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote as well as his assessment that “chaos is represented by the feminine.”
Captain America #28 (2018), Marvel Comics
The subsequent panels appeared to mock Peterson as well. In fact, Coates had Captain America state, “It’s the same for all of them. Young men. Weak. Looking for purpose. I found the flag. You found the badge. They found the Skull. He tells them what they’ve always longed to hear. That they are secretly great. That the whole world is against them. That if they’re truly men they’ll fight back. And bingo–that’s their purpose. That’s what they live for. And that’s what they’ll die for.”
Captain America #28 (2018), Marvel Comics
Peterson reacted to the panels at the time writing on X, “Do I really live in a universe where Ta-Nehisi Coates has written a Captain America comic featuring a parody of my ideas as part of the philosophy of the arch villain Red Skull?”
Do I really live in a universe where Ta-Nehisi Coates has written a Captain America comic featuring a parody of my ideas as part of the philosophy of the arch villain Red Skull? https://t.co/waFsAvWlfd
— Dr Jordan B Peterson (@jordanbpeterson) April 6, 2021
He subsequently embraced the parody and responded with a number of memes.
Some more red skull Peterson memes… See https://t.co/hLiV66qZHj for Red Skull Peterson merchandise proceeds to charity. Up first: a bus for an African school. My sister and I funded a library there previously. pic.twitter.com/SonCHf1HbQ
— Dr Jordan B Peterson (@jordanbpeterson) May 17, 2021
It’s not just Disney who has used Jordan Peterson as inspiration for its villains. Olivia Wilde informed Interview Magazine that Chris Pine’s character in her movie Don’t Worry Darling was inspired by Peterson.
Speaking with actress Maggie Gyllenhaal, Wilde stated, “We based that character on this insane man, Jordan Peterson, who is this pseudo-intellectual hero to the incel community. You know the incels?”
Gyllenhaal responded, “No.” Wilde then informed her, “They’re basically disenfranchised, mostly white men, who believe they are entitled to sex from women.” She added, “And they believe that society has now robbed them—that the idea of feminism is working against nature, and that we must be put back into the correct place.”
Jordan Peterson speaking with attendees at the 2018 Young Women’s Leadership Summit hosted by Turning Point USA at the Hyatt Regency DFW Hotel in Dallas, Texas. Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore from Peoria, AZ, United States of America, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
What do you make of The Acolyte quoting Jordan Peterson almost word for word?
