The Acolyte – Night Review

I am genuinely perplexed as to exactly what Leslye Headland and her writing staff are trying to do with The Acolyte at this stage of the game. It appeared that the reveal of Qimir as The Master was meant to be a surprise of some kind, when the series not only completely tipped its hand last week, but many viewers had managed to deduce this reveal even earlier simply by determining that you don’t hire Manny Jacinto and only use him as a tertiary character (aka “The Law and Order Rule,” wherein the most famous person who has had the least to do is definitely the killer). And that the show is still holding onto the certain revelation that Mae and Osha’s family were not, in fact, killed by the fire Mae set but by the Jedi (most likely on Master Indara’s orders, because, again, you don’t hire Carrie-Anne Moss and not give her something of note to do other than die) after everyone and their mother has already figured it out also strikes me as odd.

Yes, that revelation will shatter the Osha-Sol bond once and for all, but if you’re going to keep them separated after allowing Mae to pull a Parent Trap, why not have Mae reveal what she knows about Sol and the rest before she swaps places? That leaves Osha having to make a choice: Try to warn Sol, who she knows had a hand in the death of her family or leave him to his fate and wash her hands of the Jedi for good. Now that would be a compelling bit of narrative for her to act out. Instead, we might get her trading barbs with Qimir, who murdered a host of people she liked? Really? I guess he can reveal the secret, allowing Osha to tap into her anger and perhaps waver in her beliefs? But what does that do, other than prove that perhaps the Jedi were right that she wasn’t ready to join their ranks?

And that’s the thing that really frustrates me about the series. There’s a really interesting story that could be told here with the proper narrative foundation and pacing. We needed to understand Osha and Mae more than we do. We needed to understand more about their coven, why they were on the Jedi’s radar, and just what made these two so special from the jump. Then we can get to the modern-day portion – wherein we needed to see more about the supporting Jedi characters to get the full breadth of their relationships, both with each other and with Osha. More interactions between Yord and Osha, Jecki and Osha connecting in more than just a single scene, more indications that Sol has guilt over Osha’s dismissal. We needed more time with Mae and The Master, rather than just a shot of him standing in the distance. We needed to understand how deep her loyalty to him went – because she was pretty quick to expose him and bounce when she got the chance. So much of the foundational character work the series needed to do to ground this story as something more than just “Here’s where things started really going off the rails for the Jedi – and how they worked to cover it up for a long time until they couldn’t anymore.” Because that piece of Jedi history – the idea that even in the High Republic era there were clear cracks in the Jedi that would simply be patched over and ignored until the entire order fell apart is incredibly interesting.

Instead, the series killed off every one of our supporting characters this week (something that even some cool fight sequences can’t paper over) and left us with just the twins, Sol, and The Master in terms of key players for the remaining three episodes. We know the reveal of what really went down with the Jedi all those years ago will come out sooner rather than later (at least I hope it will – we need to have the fallout matter and it won’t if it’s a last-minute revelation). And we’ll likely get to see the “wrong” twin interact with their counterpart’s master for a bit, perhaps tempting them over to their side. Morally gray characters are interesting, especially in Star Wars, but man, I wish we’d gotten there much earlier to really explore Osha and Mae rather than chasing down reveals that we saw from miles away.

There’s a good show somewhere in this basic narrative. Headland said she pitched the series as Frozen meets Kill Bill, and that would have been a killer show. But, Kill Bill made sure we knew the villains The Bride was killing – we knew exactly what they had done to earn their fate. Here, we’re still waiting for that information to be provided to us – even though we all worked out the details, albeit after two of the four Jedi on the hit list were crossed out. Great shows have great characters who ground the narrative through their actions. Here, we have characters who act without any explanation presented to the audience. And that disconnect is what is taking what could be a compelling story about the hubris of the Jedi and turning it into a confused mess.