To follow The Acolyte, a Star Wars spinoff series that premiered this week on Disney+, you’ll need little prior knowledge of Star Wars lore—a massive plus in my book. For years now, viewers have been expected to come to shows like this with encyclopedic understanding of an entire pop culture canon. It’s a huge barrier to entry, especially when those canons are constantly ballooning with prequels, sequels and legacy character-driven spinoffs. Created by Leslye Headland, a playwright, director and screenwriter known for indie films like Bachelorette and the Netflix series Russian Doll, The Acolyte is instead a zippy mystery secreted inside a whole new set of characters and dilemmas.

Not that there aren’t plenty of Star Wars elements woven into the mix. Lightsabers get whipped out within the first 10 minutes, and if you’re craving some Wookie action, your wish will be granted. The series takes place many years before the other shows and movies, though, in an era known in the Star Wars timeline as the High Republic. It’s a Renaissance period when the Jedi are in control of the galaxy, peacefully vibing. “The Jedi live in a dream, a dream they believe everyone shares,” a voiceover tells us. But unbeknownst to them, the dark side of the Force is beginning to build strength, preparing to revolt.

This darkness manifests as a spate of Jedi masters are murdered. Osha (played by The Hate You Give star Amandla Stenberg), a former Jedi apprentice, begins as a suspect in the crimes, but soon joins forces with her former teacher Sol (Squid Games star’ Lee Jung-jae) and his crew of adepts (including Russian Doll alum Charlie Barnett and Logan’s Dafne Keen) to unravel the mystery. Along the way, they find Osha’s twin Mae (also played by Stenberg), who was separated from her sister as a young girl. It feels like an echo of the Luke and Leia storyline from the original Star Wars trilogy, except that Osha and Mae turn out to be on opposing sides of the Force.

The Acolyte is the first Star Wars show created by a woman, at a moment when companies like Disney and franchises like Star Wars are central targets in our contemporary culture wars. It’s probably not that surprising, then, that it provoked extreme negative reactions from a faction of the fandom long before its release, at least in part because it revolves around characters who are not white men. (Remember the racist harassment of Kelly Marie Tran?) Of course, it’s those characters that keep the action feeling fresh in the four episodes that I’ve seen, of eight in season one.

The series kicks off with a perfect cameo from legendary Matrix star Carrie Ann Moss as Jedi Master Andara. After being attacked by a hooded warrior in a cantina, she engages in a balletic brand of hand-to-hand combat known as force-fu. Stenberg also spends plenty of screen time fighting, and she does a perfectly fine job defining her own two characters. The Good Place’s Manny Jacinto injects every scene he is in (as Mae’s sidekick) with goofy charm and I hope we’ll see more of Jodie Turner-Smith as Mother Aniseya, the steely leader of a witches’ coven. (“The galaxy is not a place that welcomes women like us,” she says at one point, in what feels like a wink at the fandom’s historical misogyny.) But it’s Lee who really stands out so far as a gentle mentor and ambivalent representative of the Jedi way, which is suddenly under siege and forced to question the Force itself.

Based on watching half the season, I can’t say if The Acolyte will evolve into a classic. But it’s clear that Headland has set the show off on a unique path that is immensely watchable—and could open up a thoughtful new direction for the Star Wars universe.