Star Wars: An up-close look at the villainous Inquisitors (and their costumes)

Last week, Lucasfilm unveiled a first look at its upcoming Star Wars series for Disney+: Obi-Wan Kenobi, a six-part series that’s set a decade after Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith. The series finds Obi-Wan a broken man watching over one of the galaxy’s last hopes: a young boy named Luke Skywalker, keeping him secret and safe from the long arm of the Galactic Empire.

The Empire has been hard at work trying to not only keep the Galaxy in order, but trying to stamp out the last remnants of the Jedi Order. While most of the Jedi were wiped out at the end of the Clone Wars when their Clone Troopers turned on them, a number evaded death and capture. To track those remnants down, the Empire set up group of agents uniquely equipped to track down Jedi: The Inquisitors.

The group plays a large role in the animated series Star Wars: Rebels, the video game Jedi: Fallen Order, and a handful of comics that are set in the years between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope.

Overseen by Darth Vader, the Inquisitorius Program is made up of force-sensitive individuals who’d been captured and trained prior to the great purge, or recruited from the ranks of disgruntled Jedi during the war itself, and were tortured into subservience and given new identities.

The group was directly led by a former Pau’an Jedi who served as a guard at the Jedi Temple on Coruscant, known as the Grand Inquisitor. Others make appearances in those various stories: there’s the Second Sister, Fifth Brother, Sixth Brother, Seventh Sister, Eighth Brother, Ninth Sister, the Tenth Brother, and a couple of others. It appears that a couple will appear in this new series, as well as a new one, Third Sister, Reva, played by Moses Ingram.

Costumes

Each of the various Inquisitors feature their own costumes, but there are some general similarities between them: they’re clad in black, are generally masked, and wield red lightsabers.

The 501st Legion, a massive Star Wars costuming club that focuses on the franchise’s villains has established guidelines for three of the characters: the Second Sister (From Jedi: Fallen Order), Seventh Sister (From Rebels), and the Grand Inquisitor.

The Second Sister has a red-visored helmet (you can find a model to print here, here, and here), pauldrons (printable model), a form-fitting jacket with red detailing that extends to the wearer’s upper legs, a cape, bracers (printable model), gloves, belt, black pants, and leather boots. She also carries a lightsaber encased in a ring. (You can download 3D models to print one here and here.)

The Seventh Sister appears in Star Wars: Rebels, and features a similar uniform: she has a black, pointed helmet, a form-fitting jacket with red detailing, armor that covers her chest and back, bracers, black and red gloves, a belt, black pants, and leather boot. Like the Second Sister, she also carries a ringed lightsaber (you can find a printable model here.)

The Grand Inquisitor is a bit more complicated: the 501st Legion requires a mask or prosthetics to get the right shape of his head. He also requires a neck seal, shoulder armor, chest and back armor, a black and gray shirt with a red stripe on each arm, bracers, gloves and handplates, belt, thigh armor, gray pants, shin armor, and black boots. He does have a helmet, and a ringed-lightsaber (3D model).

From the Obi-Wan Kenobi teaser, it looks like he’ll have a bit of a different appearance: his head is a slightly different shape, and he’s got a slightly different armored configuration.

The 501st doesn’t have Costume Reference libraries for the other characters, but here’s a basic rundown:

• Fifth Brother: he’s a gray-skinned alien with a wide-brimmed helmet, armor on his chest and stomach, wide-shoulder armor that extends over his chest armor, forearm bracers and gloves. a belt with a round buckle, gray shirt, black pants, a kama, shin armor and boots. You can print up his lightsaber. It looks like we’ll be seeing him in the upcoming series.
• Sixth Brother: this guy is a humanoid with quite a bit of armor: he’s got a domed helmet with a faceplate that covers the top of his face (his mouth is exposed), chest and back armor with shoulders that connect to it, armor on his upper and forearms, legs, shins, and feet.
• Eighth Brother: a humanoid character with a wide helmet, armor on his chest, abs, and shins, a belt, kama, forearm bracers, and a ringed lightsaber that he can store on his back.
• Ninth Sister: She’s a large Dowutin who towers above her fellow inquisitors. She’s got a helmet with a dark red visor that covers her face, shoulder armor (not unlike that of Darth Vader’s), shoulder bells, forearm bracers, a belt, a kama, a jacket that’s made of leather, black pants with a grey (or gloss black) stripe, and shin armor. Because she’s an alien, a costumer would need to sculpt clawed hands, a mask, and a foot – as well as a robotic prosthetic.
• Tenth Brother: This character has less armor than his counterparts. He’s got long white hair, a face mask, and armor that covers his shoulders. He’s got a loose cloth top with tabbards that extend from under his shoulder armor to his waist (crossing over his chest), a v-shaped belt, dark gray pants, arm wrappings and red/black pracers, and wrappings around his lower legs and which are topped by shin armor.
• Unknown Sister: The Obi-Wan series features another, unidentified alien sister with a close-fitting helmet or headwear, a lightsaber on her back, and black armor. Undoubtedly, we’ll see a bit more when the series comes out.

Third Sister

The Third Sister looks as though she’ll be playing a major role in the upcoming Obi-Wan Kenobi series: we’ll undoubtedly see more of her costume when the series arrives in May. But, we do get a good idea of what she’s wearing in the first teaser for the series.

It looks as though she’s wearing a flexible, leather-like style of armor on her chest (which features four silver clips) and shoulders, which she wears over a black jacket — the underside of her arms feature a textured fabric. She’s wearing black gloves and forearm bracers. It looks like she has a cape, and unlike some of her other Inquisitors, she has a simple red lightsaber without a ring.

As with any teaser trailer, it’s hard to tell exactly what might change between now and the final release: the Grand Inquisitor has attracted some ire from fans for his different appearance from what he looked like in Rebels, and there could be some minor changes in the months ahead, should Lucasfilm decide to make adjustments.

As far as how these characters look? We’ll find out more starting on May 25th, when the series drops on Disney+.