The Acolyte (2024)
I was just a kid — and more importantly, a member of the target demographic — when Star Wars was released in 1977. But a funny thing happens to franchises that stick around for decades. First, they started targeting audiences younger than me. Suddenly I noticed all of the actors were younger than me. And now, shows like The Acolyte are being made by people younger than me. Everything I have to say about this show isn’t negative — there were a few things I liked here and there — but at no point did I feel like the show was made for me. If there’s a character from Star Wars I most identify with at this point, it’s Yoda, snuggling under his blanket and waiting for Luke to shut his pie hole so I can finally get some sleep.
In the first season of The Acolyte, a group of four Jedi — Master Sol, Master Indara, Master Kelnacca, and Master Torbin — have been sent to investigate Brendok, a planet that according to them shouldn’t have life but somehow does. The only explanation the group can come up with for this anomole is that somewhere on the planet lies a “Vergence in the Force.” After nearly two months of snooping the Jedi encounter Mae and Osha, a pair of Force-sensitive 8-year-old twin girls who are being raised by a coven of witches. The Jedi demand the girls be tested and things escalate quickly between the two groups which leads to a conflict in which the coven is destroyed. Amidst the chaos, Mae and Osha are separated, leaving each twin thinking they are the lone survivor.
In the current timeline (which takes place fifteen years after that inciting event) we learn Mae and Osha are diametrically opposite. Osha, the “good twin,” trained with the Jedi but ultimately left before becoming a Jedi. Mae, the “evil” twin, has been training with what equates to a Sith Lord, focusing her skills, powers, and energy to kill the four Jedi who destroyed her home all those years ago.
In the first episode, Mae sets her revenge plot in motion by tracking down and murders Master Indara. Work quickly reaches the Jedi who incorrectly identify Osha as their suspect. When a second murder takes place while Osha is in custody, the Jedi realize there’s trouble in them there Brendok woods.
By the end of the first episode of The Acolyte, viewers have a good idea of what the show did right, and where it falls apart. The choreography in the fight between Mae and Master Indara features Matrix-esque action (ironic, as Indara is played by Carrie Anne-Moss, aka “Trinity”), but Indara’s choices throughout the battle are laughable poor and it seems inconceivable that a Jedi Master could be so easily out fought and outsmarted by such a young adversary.
And the Jedi’s incompetence doesn’t stop there — in fact, it doesn’t stop throughout the entire series. Based on an eyewitness to the battle, the Jedi zoom across the galaxy to arrest Osha, who is working on a Trade Federation ship as a repair mechanic. At a minimum, wouldn’t there be security cameras on the ship, showing that Osha was there? Did the Jedi happen to watch Attack of the Clones, in which Obi-Wan and Anakin encountered a shapeshifting alien assassin? The entire season plays out this way, with the Jedi making continually dumber decisions. It would be different if the show were attempting to make the Jedi look like bumbling idiots, but it doesn’t. By the end of the eight seasons, every single character has made multiple head-scratching out-of-character decisions solely to move the plot forward. The Jedi even manage to fall for the ol’ “twin swithceroo” trick, something that normally only works in children’s sitcoms.
There’s an old problem in Star Wars that I refer to as “R2’s Rockets.” In Revenge of the Sith R2-D2 uses built-in rocket boosters to fly, a skill that would have come in handy many times in the original trilogy but which he inexplicably never uses. The “R2 Rocket” problem is on full display in The Acolyte. The Sith Lord the Jedi seek wears a helmet made of cortosis, a metal that is impenetrable by the Force and even shorts out lightsabers when they hit it. When wearing it, Jedi cannot peer into the baddie’s mind or thoughts. Cool, cool. But in a POV shot from inside the helmet we can clearly see there are eye slits and the thing is obviously not air tight, which begs the question… can the Force not go through cracks? And much like the old “why don’t they make airplanes out of the same material they make the black boxes out of,” why isn’t everyone running around in suits made of cortosis? Another problem is how the Jedi are able to sense people using the force. Jedi are always sensing disturbances in the force, and yet the skill only seems to come up when it’s convenient. Back in the witches’ fortress, one of them randomly senses the presence of the Jedi. But later, the Jedi come in direct contact with the Sith Lord while he’s dressed as his alter-ego, a shopkeeper named Qimir, and despite having a relatively long conversation, none of them suspect a thing. Force powers are weird. In another scene, we learn Qimir has “mindwiping” ability that exceeds anything we saw in the Men in Black films. In one episode he wipes someone’s mind, removing all their memories of another character and also removing all memories back to a certain date. Is mindwiping a skill only the Sith possess? Is it something only Qimir can do? Why don’t the Jedi wipe the minds of everyone who’s about to attack them? Who knows!
It goes on and on. The amount of suspension of belief required to endure this show is immeasurable. It is explained that one of the original quartet of Jedi, a Wookiee Jedi Master Kelnacca, has retreated to a planet and lives a life of solitude, hiding in a forest. No one has been able to find him. And then in the course of a day, three separate parties — a group of Jedi, Mae, and Qimir — all descend on the planet and are able to find him pretty easily. For the record, Qimir has tasked Mae to kill a Jedi without using a weapon. It’s part of her training, although the reasons are foggy. Qimir tasks Mae with killing the Wookiee… and then inexplicably parts ways with her to try and do it on his own, completely undermining her training. In case you’re wondering, Wookiees wield lightsabers exactly how you might imagine, like a cross between a baseball bat and a battle axe.
Later int he show we discover another Jedi, Master Venestra, refuses to report any of this to the Jedi Council, and has directly lied to them about all of their findings. She claims all of this will make the Council look bad to the Senate, but doesn’t a Sith Lord on the loose and a teenager murdering Jedi make them look just as bad?
In possibly the most baffling and frustrating aspect of the entire show is that the inciting event, the death of the girls’ mother, sorta-kinda seemed like an accident? At worst, a Jedi was defending himself against what seemed to be an offensive move. This is the event the four Jedi have been hiding for a decade and a half. Buuuuut… don’t Jedi kill people all the time? I seem to recall Luke Force-choking Gamorrean guards in Jabba’s Palace and slicing a bunch of Jabba’s skiff guards in half when, in retrospect, it seems like he probably could have just Force-pushed them off the skiff into the sand. Not for nothin’, but Luke killed two million people when he blew up the Death Star, and at least a hundred more when he destroyed Jabba’s sail barge, so stabbing a random witch who looked like she was about to attack you doesn’t seem like an act worth of decades of secrecy and regret.
While the series tries hard to not use established characters as a crutch, it does feature a few cameos. In one brief scene cone-headed Jedi Master Ki-Adi-Mund makes an appearance, a cameo that will excite absolutely no one, but slightly more interesting is a glimpse of Darth Plagueis, the Sith Lord Palpatine told Anakin was so powerful that he could use the Force to create life. This seems to explain the existence of the twins, who were born of the Force. There’s a third cameo at the end of the final episode that mostly serves as fan service.
Not to beat a dead Jedi, but my biggest problem with The Acolyte is that it makes Jedi as a whole look unorganized, incompetent, and for the most part, pretty dumb. They can’t solve a murder mystery, they can’t handle a simple cover-up, and they are constantly and embarrassingly being outwitted by seemingly everyone they come in contact with. Most of them are barely likeable.
Based on the number of unanswered plot points by the end of Season One it is obvious that Disney was planning for at least a second season of The Acolyte, but an estimated budget of $250 million per season combined with a Rotten Tomatoes approval rating hovering around 50% makes that seem unlikely. Of all the questions left hanging, and there are many, the biggest one I had was why in the Phantom Menace are the Jedi completely blindsided by the existence of a Sith Lord in the form of Darth Maul. In that film the Jedi Council act as though no one has seen a Sith Lord. One member of the council is Ki-Adi-Mund, who is in the series and definitely knows there’s a Sith Lord running around! Maybe somebody mindwiped him, too. Does mindwiping someone with a giant conehead take longer than normal? I digress.
Season One of The Acolyte is available for streaming on Disney+ and who knows, if you’re under the age of 30, you’ll probably like it. Come for the action, stay for the plot holes.