When I first heard that The Acolyte was coming to Disney+ as the latest Star Wars television series, I wasn’t all that excited about it. After all, the Star Wars live action television series have been quite the mixed bag, and the track record of late hasn’t been all that great (with Andor being the only real gem in the lot). Then I heard that Carrie-Anne Moss would be taking on the role of a Jedi Master and I was much more intrigued, as I’m someone who firmly believes that Moss can elevate pretty much anything she appears in. So, imagine just how much my interest in the series plummeted by the time that first opening title sequence appeared. Oof. At least the fight scene was like a fun cut-scene from The Matrix? What a waste of Moss, and really, what a waste of much of this series’ stellar cast.
The central issue with The Acolyte thus far is the same issue that plagues many a Star Wars series (as well as many of the MCU entries in the past several years as well): telling, not showing. How do we find out about Mae and Osha’s tragic backstory? We’re told in several exposition dumps. How do we find out who Mae is searching for? Osha tells us just which Jedi Masters were on their planet the night of the devastating fire that killed their mothers. How do we find out pretty much every key piece of exposition we need to learn in the opening two episodes? Someone tells us. And sure, sometimes it’s necessary to hear a story rather than see it – but this is Star Wars. This universe loves a tragic flashback. And showing us what happened, well, that’s always far more impactful than simply telling us what happened.*
*Now, I complain about this because it’s bad writing, but I also wanted to acknowledge that I suspect the story of what happened that night with the fire isn’t what we’ve been told happened. So, I suspect the series is saving that key flashback for the perfect moment, probably when Mae confronts someone – Sol, Osha, another Jedi – and tells what actually happened, something that Osha wasn’t told by Sol for years, prompting a feeling of betrayal between her and Sol. But still, simply providing an exposition dump rather than letting us discover through storytelling all of this information makes the writing feel unnecessarily stilted.
And the telling, not showing, impacts the episodes in other ways. For one, it doesn’t let the characters pop the way they could. Mae and Osha are more plot devices at this point than characters – we need Mae to lead us to the Sith-like Dark Side user (since the Sith technically weren’t in existence at this point in the timeline) and we need Osha to be our hero who tries to save her twin sister from the pull of the darkness before it’s too late. Yord is lingering somewhere between comic relief, potential love interest, and Jedi nerd (I wish the series would pick a lane for him, as Charlie Barnett is too good of an actor to linger in no man’s land like this). Dafne Keen’s Jecki is proving to be fun thus far, which was a nice bonus – I wasn’t expecting her character to be one of the more fun ones in the series (and maybe fun enough to get me on board for the remaining episodes now that Moss is off the gameboard – save for that flashback I know is coming near the end of the season). And Lee Jung-jae’s Sol is . . . there. One of the biggest issues with Jedi Masters is that they’re rarely allowed much personality, and thus far, Sol lacks that in spades. Lee was such a compelling protagonist in Squid Game, so I’m holding out hope he manages to get some spark before the season is over.
Which brings us to Amandla Stenberg, tasked with the complex ask of playing twins – one good and one not so good. Thus far, Stenberg has done a nice job developing distinct personalities for the two characters. The challenge moving forward will be to see how the writing allows each character to grow over the course of the story – and if Stenberg will be able to keep that distinction as the two characters undoubtedly grow closer in nature (you can’t believe Mae will stay dark and Osha will stay fully light, right?). I worry that the writing might be more concerned with the mythology being unveiled and less with the central duo it is using to unveil it – and these first two episodes haven’t eased me of that worry in their writing and structure. But, we’ve got six more to go, so I’m going to hold my judgement until we make it through the gauntlet.
Overall, I have to say I’m not fully sold on The Acolyte. The structure of the story isn’t all that compelling thus far – two sisters, set on different paths, meeting years later for a reckoning neither ever expected to face is simply a twist on several other Star Wars tales that have come before (or, I guess, after in the actual timeline). The clash between light and dark, along with the deeply personal nature of the battle between the story’s protagonists, can be seen in every one of the trilogies, for one. What can set this one apart is the cast – which is filled with heavy hitters mentioned above, as well as Manny Jacinto as Mae’s smuggler friend Qimir and Rebecca Henderson as Vernestra – and the story’s unique place in the Star Wars timeline. We’ve never had a live action series set in the High Republic era, so at least there’s a novelty there. But if there’s one thing that’s become pretty clear over the years, it’s that stories about the Jedi tend to be much less compelling than those about normal folks in this particular universe. The rigidity that comes with the Jedi Order – even now, when things are looser than they will become down the line – makes Jedi much less interesting than non-Jedi in the Star Wars universe. Can showrunner Leslye Headland make the Jedi interesting enough to warrant this particular series? I guess we’ll see in six weeks.
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