The Acolyte

I really enjoyed The Acolyte and I’m frankly a little baffled by all the negativity I keep seeing! I mean obviously there is the racist and misogynistic contingent of self declared Star Wars fans, but I’ve also seen folk on Mastodon that I don’t think fall into those camps complaining about it. But anyway, it doesn’t matter, because I thought it was great and is actually the only really interesting Star Wars TV show Disney has made!

First, my general feelings on Star Wars

I would not describe myself as a Star Wars fan. I’m not steeped in the lore, I’m just a casual viewer. I like it, sure. It’s fine, I do think the world is really cool. I was fully obsessed with the Knights Of The Old Republic Xbox games as a teen (fun fact, that’s the game I ever completed!). I did get very excited when I visited Galaxy’s Edge at Hollywood Studios, Orlando (I love props and attention to detail!). I had a great time with my drink in Olga’s Cantina!  …But most of the live action stories are a bit too simplistic to get my juices truly flowing, it’s very heroes versus villains – good versus evil.  That’s fine, I mean it was originally written for children, but I prefer a bit more complexity to chew over. A bit of nuance, some more shades of gray.

Or, when they do try to do something more interesting in the movies – as with Anakin’s fall in the prequels – they just don’t stick the landing.

In my memory right now, having not watched most of the movies in years, Rogue One is my favourite..  which is probably a weird choice! But I’m realising that I just prefer smaller scale personal stories to the epic ones. I like that that movie is a small crew doing their job. It’s more intimate and their sacrifice made me more emotional that anything I remember in any of the other films.

As far as the TV shows go I got bored by The Mandalorian’s first episode, The Book of Bobba Fett I lasted about 15 minutes, I saw bits of Ahsoka as my partner watched it but it wasn’t interesting, and I did mostly enjoy Obi Wan Kenobi if not just because of Ewan McGregor and the amazing actress that played small Leia, because now I can’t remember anything that happened in it (notoriously bad memory). We did watch episode one of Andor and I was up for watching more but my partner wasn’t bothered and then I forgot all about it until now!

The Acolyte – obviously there are spoilers!

And then along came The Acolyte!  The first episode had me interested to watch because I like a mystery story, and the idea of Jedi solving crimes sounded cool. I just want to see Jedi on missions! But then it became apparent that it was looking to do something more interesting. It finally felt like something actually new, but also like a return to the core of the original story.

And it had the best and coolest Jedi fight scenes I think I’ve ever seen! It was really thrilling to watch those! My favourite was Jecki, she had moves!

We know that the Jedi Order was once a powerful force throughout the galaxy and that it fell. The Acolyte is set a really “long time ago” and looks back at the cracks appearing in the Order a hundred of years before The Phantom Menace. It does this through  the story of four Jedi Knights and the mistakes that they made irrevocably changing the lives of two young sisters.

I’m not going to claim this was a perfect TV show. It’s not, it had some pacing issues and over eight episodes it was rushed at the end. But I will also say that that’s also pretty par for the course with Star Wars – all the movies have their flaws, not being perfect feels very Star Warsy to me!

There are a lot of unanswered questions. I don’t think every point it tried to make landed. But … I really appreciated what it was trying do. I loved that we got to see the events on Brendok from both sides, that we got to see things unfolded as they did because of fear, and escalated so quickly because of one man conflating his own desire for a padawan with the right thing to do.

My partner and I have had quite different interpretations of events, which is very interesting to me. We discussed tonight whether the Jedi Order is a religion – I think it is, he got really hung up on definitions!

I saw the witches as just a different group of force users who believed in something different to the Jedi. To them The Force is The Thread. But under the rule of the Jedi Order different beliefs about the Force aren’t tolerated – they’re basically the Force Police – so the witches are hiding on Brendok, a planet outside of the Republic. As far as we see in this show it’s just a different religion, there is no clear evidence that the Witches are doing anything evil.

Mae, with a child’s understanding, repeats her mother’s word word “sacrifice” but that could mean many things in a religious context, I’m sure the Jedi talk about “sacrifice” – like Catholic priests they’re not allowed to marry or have families, that’s a sacrifice for the sake of their cult. One Anakin Skywalker was not willing to make!

They might be up to no good, one of the big open questions is why and how the twins were created. Some of what we saw didn’t look like the ideal environment for children, but they also did appear to have love and emotional support from their Mothers! Sol doesn’t take the time to actually investigate properly whether there was real danger, he jumps to all manner of conclusions based on a few things he saw (after reading Watching You I’m thinking a lot about the assumptions that can be made from a distance!) supported by his own belief system and his want to take one of the girls as a padawan (plus I think all the Jedi are pretty bored with their weeks long sample collecting field mission!).

I love that Mae’s question of exactly what Sol was trying to save them from was never answered! He didn’t know.

The Jedi approach the cult in a confrontational way – breaking into their home armed – and (as nicely as they might phrase it)  threatening to take the twins away, which creates an immediate air of hostility that fuels the prejudices the cult members have against the Jedi, likely due to past experience.

My partner makes a lot of the fact that the Mother Aniseya invaded Torbin’s mind. I agree that was the first act of violence which only increased the Jedi’s fear, but think about why she did that. I think she was demonstrating her power out of fear, to warn the Jedi away and to protect her people. And as she pointed out – and we heard the Jedi Council agreed – the Jedi had no right to be there interfering in their lives and trying to take their children.

We saw that the Mother Aniseya was amenable to letting Osha go, although some of the others were not. Certainly Mother Koril was spoiling for a fight and stoked Mae up to the point she set that fire. But it is possible there is an outcome where Osha left with them, Mae stayed and nobody suffered a brutal tragedy.

If Torbin and Sol hadn’t charged off and broken in a second time, Mae could have gotten help with the fire she’d started.

After the Jedi left everyone to die in a fire, they decided to lie about their colossal fuck up, and cover it up. Letting Osha grow up confused with misplaced anger at her own twin.

In the end I felt sad about everything, but if ever anyone had a good reason to turn to the dark side against the Jedi I think it’s Osha.. although I’ll concede how it played out on screen was rather abrupt.

The show does leave a lot of dangling threads at the end.

• How did Mae end up with Qimir.. but also never seeing his face?
• What is Qimir’s deal? He seems to have a big old chip on his shoulder about Jedi. How did Venestra fail him?
• What does the twins being a vergence mean? And if they are the same person how did they end up with such different personalities? Anakin Skywalker (aka Darth Vader) was also a vergence, and also taken on for training when he was too old from a traumatic childhood… Maybe if Venestra hadn’t covered all this up the Jedi could have learned from this mistake.
• Why couldn’t both twins leave with Qimir at the end?! I was very confused why Mae had to be memory wiped and left behind?
• How was the “Sol killed everyone” cover up at the end going to work when he was teaching during the first two murders?

The change of heart that Mae had seemed a bit abrupt, but it was more understandable than Osha seemingly instantly turning to force-choke-using dark side (red crystal turning dark!). I think the show failed to explore that side of her. We saw plenty of Mae’s anger as a young girl, but also that she was a little girl scared of her sister leaving, but I don’t think that darker side was demonstrated in Osha. While I thought it was a cool moment, I am not convinced it was narratively earned.

I guess she saw Qimir as her best and only option after she choked out Sol. Plus he’s hot AF Manny Jacinto swimming naked in lakes and letting his hair flop around into his eyes like that. I thought the use of romantic tropes in their story was interesting, including sort of holding hands in the end. I assume this is a manipulation tactic, but again, I wish this had gotten a bit more development!

I would like another season to explore this whole story more, but I don’t know how likely that is. I have never thought so much about Star Wars – my partner and I had discussions after each episode. I wrote this whole blog post!

I haven’t even really mentioned Jecki and Yord whom I loved! Jecki could fight man, she was awesome! And I loved much of a rigid rule follower Yord was. I missed those guys. And I felt for Master Indara, she tried to be the voice of reasons and to rein Sol but he was out of control, and then she made a bad choice with the cover up.

I want to see more Jedi going on missions and dealing with the day to day of being the supposed peace keepers, rather than epic galaxy wide events. But I am a Star Trek girl at heart (maybe you can tell, I prefer diplomacy over action!), maybe I just want a more contemplative episodic Star Trek style show set in the Star Wars universe?

That’s one of the reasons why I enjoyed the KOTOR games so much – I’m a Jedi on a mission making difficult decisions. Yes it’s a galaxy ending event but.. you get to do a lot of side quests too!

Anyway, this excitement over The Acolyte has prompted me to go back and rewatch the prequel movies! We’ve watched The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones, we’ll probably do Revenge of the Sith tomorrow night and then I’ll share thoughts. I’ve got to say it is interesting to rewatch with themes from The Acolyte in mind!

And before I go, I highly recommend checking out My Comic Relief posts on The Acolyte and Star Wars in general! Thoughtful and infectiously enthusiastic!