Saturday, February 8, 2025

The Acolyte Is The Future Sith Want (And Fans Need)

On the shores of an unknown planet, a man and woman gaze out at an alien ocean framed by cliffs, their hands jointly interlinked around a weapon as they enjoy their triumph. Soon, it seems, they will become lovers. Earlier, she watched him bathe nude. This image of two-robed warriors reveling in the defeat of their enemies recalls many similar scenes like it, but especially the classic Disney “happily ever after,” complete with a golden sunset.

Unique from other like-endings, these two figures at the end of “The Acolyte,” one of Disney’s very best “Star Wars” shows, are murderers and villains, not heroes. And rather than self-consciously signaling to the viewer, “this is bad, we should hate this,showrunner Lesyle Headland empowers the audience to parse out how to feel about this difficult victory on their own. Osha (Amandla Stenberg) has just murdered her former Jedi master, Sol (Lee Jung-jae), by choking him to death with her blooming dark side powers, and it’s left to you whether he deserved it. Osha then bled Sol’s stolen blue lightsaber to Sith-crimson and joined forces with the hot and vascular Sith master Qimir (Manny Jacinto). Our show’s main character has just fallen to the dark side, and yet, the “happy” ending remains; her victory is the galaxy’s loss.

This bold season finale is one of many reasons “The Acolyte” is what “Star Wars” needs to be right now and why it must continue for at least an additional season. Preferably, many. Over eight disruptive episodes that constantly push the envelope of what “Star Wars” can be, Headland achieved what all Jedi claim to: she found balance. In a franchise that infamously struggles to balance the old and the new, she found the way. “The Acolyte” is both classical but unafraid of change, and if “Star Wars” is going to maintain not only its cultural relevance but the emotion at its heart, it’s exactly the kind of “Star Wars” Disney needs to continue to make. Unconvinced? Then I point to the mid-season twilight forest battle, among the most thrilling 30 minutes of “Star Wars” in nearly five years. Intense, sexy, and wet, it commanded a higher sense of danger than this series has felt in ages, killing multiple lead cast members with the best and most vibrant lightsaber action since 2005. I’ve watched it five times.

Yes, there are flaws. Some have complained about “the twins” Osha and Mae being uninteresting compared to Sol and Qimir and that the writing sometimes lacks clarity. I understand that criticism. I connect more to Osha than to Mae, especially as Osha is pulled between two masters (one a corrupted father figure, a “Star Wars” classic, and the other the Sith boyfriend), igniting different shades of light and dark, trauma and healing. She’s my idea of a strong “Star Wars” protagonist, where her journey is embedded in theme, and that theme is made real through behavior and choice. That’s “Star Wars. When she turned dark, I believed her. After what she’s lived, why wouldn’t she? Like Rey, Osha has discovered a power within herself she doubted she had and unlocked with it a freedom and agency she always craved. Yet, I also now fear for her future, and while some of the writing may be fuzzy, that contradiction is a place “Star Wars has never taken me. Like Anakin in “Revenge of the Sith,” I want more.For years, friends have told me they’ve stopped watching “Star Wars because it started to “feel the same. Across video games, movies, and TV shows, there’s been a glut of regurgitated plot points mired in variations of the same few ships, planets, and characters. No more desert planets, I beg you. I’d excuse this as purely anecdotal if the viewership numbers for “Star Warshaven’t steadily decreased in recent years, as the initial buzz blow-up for “The Mandalorian fizzled. “The Acolyte, the first live-action “Star Wars series to feature no legacy characters (thus making it unfair to compare), was nevertheless the lowest yet. But if “Star Wars wants to turn things around, we need storytelling that feels urgent and vital, that can challenge as much as it can uplift and stretch the boundaries of what the series can be while still feeling deeply personal to its creator. With “The Acolyte, the core of live-action “Star Wars feels truly new again for the first time since Disney took over. It’s the dip in the bacta tank the series desperately needs.

Part of that is how “The Acolyte is the most Lucas-literate entry into “Star Wars of the Disney era. Headland takes kernels of plot and theme from the prequels and expands them into full arcs as the season-long cover-up thread pulled right from Yoda concealing the Jedi’s diminished abilities from the senate in “Attack of the Clones. She understands the force as something that can both liberate or lead to destruction and that the fight between light and dark is more complex than how dark your robe is. And Headland has a smart sense of how to implement the force into action, like how Sol “catching Osha as she falls off a cliff in episode 1 is also an expression of unbalanced paternal love; he wants to rescue her, but too much.

Headland also embraces the new “High Republic era, deploys the wuxia-pian genre as a core influence, features space witches who, like the lurking Darth Plagueis, seek to expand the rules of life in the force, and crafts her series with surprising moral ambiguity. Rather than indulge in another lap of X-Wings and Tie Fighters, the ships and droids in “The Acolyte finally feel new with a retro-futuristic feel. The action is revitalized with “force fu and cortosis, a metal that deactivates lightsabers. The villain Qimir wears it as a gauntlet and a shark-faced helmet, allowing him to headbutt a lightsaber, one of the sickest things to ever happen in “Star Wars. Headland didn’t invent the era or all the gear, but as a self-professed EU-nerd, she knows how to use them.

I can anticipate the rounds of counter-argument to the claim. Some of you will say “The Acolyte sucks –– the show has a mixed reception, with reactions ranging from great enthusiasm to those with enough hate to have lightning spark from their fingertips. Or, for others, they simply liked other entries into the Disney “Star Wars canon more. Fair. I’ve enjoyed some of the films and shows more than others, but for their virtues, too many have gluttonously fed off what came before. “The Force Awakens (a film I actually love) put the wrong foot forward by embracing the Empire and Rebellion with all the trim, and now Dave Filoni’s mini-franchise of shows has become widely branded as the “Marvelization of Star Wars, with seasons of “The Mandalorian and “Ahsoka more interested in cross-overs, cameos, or setting up more content than working as an absorbing adventure. Whatever Lucas imparted to Filoni as his protege feels lost in Filoni’s desire to bring back characters from “The Clone Wars and “Rebels rather than tell a good (let alone fresh) story.That’s not to say there haven’t been films or series that breathed radical new life into the space fantasy. I love “The Last Jedi and “Andor, but for all their virtues, they are also one-offs. The essence of the series can never follow in the footsteps of Rian Johnson’s divisive mid-trilogy meta-adventure, which reduced the series to its barest and most deconstructed essentials. “Andor separates itself by its very premise, a political thriller that’s the closest Disney “Star Wars has ever come to making a series explicitly “for adults, all the more reason it can’t be a true North Star for the series’ future path.

Instead, Headland has crafted a series that –– whatever its flaws –– brings a level of thematic and moral nuance commonly absent from “Star Wars. The series does for the Jedi what “Andor did for the Rebels and Empire, with a broad plot with nearly the same bite as when Cassian, the protagonist of “Andor, kills an unarmed man he learns may rip off a rebel sect. Yet, the moral fog around Jedi and Sith preceded any of the above, circling through the towering skyscrapers of Coruscant in the “Star Wars prequels. IE, they’re pacifists, yet curiously lecture “this weapon is your lifeof their lightsabers –– a detail mirrored in “The Acolyte when Sol influences Osha as a child to join the order not with a promise of the Jedi’s mission of peace, but by showing her his deadly laser-sword.

Even as some of these story ideas may not be executed with the literary tact of Andor, they still bear fruit. The two maligned flashback episodes show the demise of Osha and Mae’s coven, each directed by the filmmaker Kogonada, as a tense episode of shared, if uneven, complicity. Rather than a simple good-and-evil fallout where the Jedi slaughtered the witches, we see a pattern of mutual escalation and aggression. Sol and the Jedi are the truculent interlopers and pressure the coven to train Osha and Mae, but the witches also respond with threats, hijacking a padawan’s mind and rewiring it to go home at any cost. That choice, like every use of the force in these episodes, backfires, turning the key power of Jedi and witches alike into a monkey’s paw, where every decision, however noble, has an equal and opposite tragic reaction.

The most devastating expression of this thread comes when Aniseya (Osha and Mae’s mother) turns into an ambiguous gothic vapor to save Mae from harm, but Sol –– having just been threatened by the coven –– misinterprets this as a hostile act and kills her. Some have complained we can’t understand what she’s doing, but we can’t understand because Sol can’t understand. He thought it was self-defense. It makes sense why. But had he not broken in, had he not pressured them to let him train the twins, he would not have been there. As a result, the coven hijacks another Jedi’s mind to protect themselves, and the Jedi inadvertently kills the coven by severing that psychic connection.

Who is the most guilty? Who is the least? The Ringer amusingly ranked the culpability of each character in the conflict, and I can’t remember a time “Star Wars fans have so passionately debated the ethics of character and choice. “The Acolyte is both deeply personal to Leslye Headland and true to Lucas’ vision of this world and Jedi, but nothing may be more faithful to Lucas’ spirit than provoking the audience to think through moral problems amidst the adventure-pulp of kinetic lightsaber action. For that reason, if no other, it should be renewed. But even if it isn’t, Disney would do well to make more like it. 

Have you seen “The Acolyte” on Disney+ yet? If so, what did you think of the series? Please let us know in the comments section below or let us know on our X account.

Subscribe to Our Newsletter!

Brendan Hodges
Brendan Hodges
Culture writer. Bylines at Roger Ebert, Vague Visages and The Metaplex. Lover of the B movie and prone to ramble about aspect ratios at parties.

Related Articles

Stay Connected

101,150FollowersFollow
101,150FollowersFollow
9,315FansLike
9,315FansLike
4,686FollowersFollow
4,686FollowersFollow

Latest Reviews