Spoilers The Acolyte

[FPAlpha]

Boba Fett was quite good until it was overtaken by The Mandalorian, turning it into season 3.1 of Mandalorian ( even though i loved the Mandalorian parts).

Agree on Ahsoka, way too much hype for a muddled Rebels season 5 with too many plot lines dangling and general dumb actions on behalf of everyone.

I still wonder why Kenobi was even made, i.e. what the show was trying to accomplish apart from cash grabbing Star Wars fans. We all know how it will end, so everything in between doesn't matter at all because it has to end in a very specific way so all tension was never there to begin with. The elements were good though, i loved depressed Ewan McGregor, Vader toying with that Inquisitor woman ( can't even remember the name) and the last fight between Anakin and Obi Wan before they meet for a final time on the Death Star. However those ew moments don't warrant an entire show.

Disney treats Star Wars now like they treat Marvel - throw anything on the screen hoping it sticks and more often than not it's sliding down the wall.

 

[Booji]

Another excellent episode. I'm happy to see the predictions from everyone are completely wrong. Can't wait until next week!

 

[valkyrie013]

I was going to giver her up.. BUUTTT.. the other mother and most of the witches were against it.. so unless the jedi gave up.. this was going to happen.

Didn't really say what this Vergence.. was the colorful tree? the whole planet? Space babies?

Better than Andor (low bar) but.. yeah could have been condensed better. 1 movie could have done it better.

 

[Ridcully]

What a mess....
There is no logic or coherent thread through any of it!
Sorry they deserve the dive into the sewer.

 

[SG-17]

Only if you pretend Ahsoka, the Book of Boba Fett and Mando Season 3 don't exist.

Nah, this is the worst.

Ashoka's biggest sin was that it was boring, Thrawn was great.
BoBF had the fantastic Mando episodes and finale.
Mando S3 was great.
Even Kenobi had a fantastic finale.

Maybe Acolyte can pull off a miracle in its finale too.

 

[Captrek]

I’m starting to think this season- or series-long mystery format just doesn’t work on TV. We’ve been burned by the ending too many times.

Ahsoka is the other Star Wars show using the format. That mysterious presence calling to Baylon? The mysterious cargo Thrawn loaded onto his ship? The only thing making those story lines interesting is the promise of an interesting explanation later on. That promise just became a lot less credible.

 

[Tosk]

I’m starting to think this season- or series-long mystery format just doesn’t work on TV. We’ve been burned by the ending too many times.

I'm completely sick of stories that hide backstory until the penultimate ep just for the sake of being a "BIG MYSTERY!!"

Mysteries are great when done well, but they're not when the revelations are this limp.

Too many modern shows are (seemingly) geared more towards making people come back to find out than actually delivering the goods when the time comes.

 

[Reverend]

Well that was both a perfectly reasonable explanation for most of the holes left by the previous flashback episode, but also somewhat of a let-down in that it went down pretty much as one might surmise based on what we know so far. Not that I'm against logical plotting, or in favour of twists for twists' sake, but this whole episode was framed as Sol finally confessing to Mae what *really* happened that night . . . and there's nothing here that should really change anything for her beyond perhaps what the Coven did to Kelnacca, and I kinda doubt that would sway her much.
The only new piece of information is that Sol initially tried to save both sisters, but when he couldn't, he chose to only save Mae. Clearly trying was a mistake; a Jedi ought to know better than to try.
On the positive side it does show that both the Jedi and the Coven were trying to do the right thing, but distrust, fear, and anger led them astray and events spun out of control. They're both just as responsible for what happened as each other; had Mother Aniseya not targeted Torbin, playing on his anxieties, planting fear in his mind, and upsetting his ability to control himself, he would not have torn off on his own and they all would have waited for the council to call them back and tell them to knock it off and leave the witches alone.

Random notes: -

• The opening shot features yet another old henge on Brendok, similar (though by no means identical) to the ones on Tython, Seatos, Peridia. It possible those are just ruins of structures destroyed in the Great Hyperspace Disaster, but they could have also been ruins long before that. Had to know for certain.
• The idea that *all* of that life sprung up in just a century is certainly interesting, and one can understand why the Jedi might believe it to be the result of a vergence in the force.
• As expected, the Sol saw a creepy old fortress full of witches chanting and performing weird rituals, only two kids in the whole place and feared the worse.
• Nice that Nightsisters at least got a name drop for those confused by the concept of there being more than one kind of witch in a galaxy of millions of planets and quintillions of people. Though Indara's line that "Nightsisters don't raise younglings" is a curious one given that we know that they do indeed have children (at least half a dozen that we're aware of for a fact.) So she's either misinformed, or she means they don't go out and "recruit" younglings in the way the Jedi do.
• So the assumption is that the Coven came here because of the vergence and used it to create Mae and Osha; splitting one consciousness into two bodies . . . so they could inherit Aniseya's power and position? I think we're still missing some context here, but with one episode left I can't imagine we'll be getting any more insights into this.
• I get how the fire outside Osha's room got out of control so quickly (dropping a whole damn lamp's worth of fuel will do that!) but it still seemed to spread a little too fast for a place mostly made of stone and a few old timbers. Maybe the wiring was so old and unsafe, the damage the initial fire caused was enough to short everything else out and start electicial fires all over, setting off some of the old mining equipment until it blew the generator? I guess more time actually passed than we directly experianced, and the fire had more time to spread than it appeared to.
• There's a lot to unpack from the confrontation that led to Aniseya's death; Mae shows up crying and begging for help. Sol thinks it's Osha. Koril feels her daughter is being threatened and moves to defend. Torbin does the same. Aniseya watches it unfold and then . . . disapperates? Mae (who Sol still assumes is Osha) also starts to disapperate. Sol thinks Osha (who's actually Mae) is being harmed reacts by plunging a lightsaber into the weird, evil looking cloud of magik smoke, recorporealising and killing Aniseya.
• Still not 100% sure what Aniseya was trying to do. We've seen Talzin discorporealise herself like that before as a means of escape (and it was a non-trivial matter to get herself back on the physical plane.) So perhaps she was attempting to simply flee and take Mae with her? Hell of a panic inducing way to do it in the midst of a stand-off. I'd say what else did she think would happened, but it appears to have been an almost instinctual act, and it was all over in mere seconds.
• Koril's fate is a little more ambiguous. She also turns into black smoke, and it seems to imply that she's posessed Kelnacca . . . what happens to her after that is anyone's guess. The simplest explanation is that she sacrificed her physical form to pull off that stunt, and perished with the other witches when Inara broke their hold on the Wookiee. There's an outside chance that she's still in the wind (so to speak) and she's the missing link betwen the covern and the Sith . . . but I kinda doubt it.
• Interesting that it was Indara that decided to ommit the details of what happened from the High Council, and it seems mostly for Osha's sake. It certainly wasn't to cover her own mistakes since most of this mess was on Sol, not her. Though it's quite telling that she damn near lost her temper with Sol; it's possible that part of that decision was a desire to punish Sol, or at least make him serve a penance for his folly by followign though on his promise.

The Jedi were of noble intent but smug execution and a shocking height of self-assuredness. The Sith's return took wholesale advantage of those failings and used them against the Order.

In their defence; by this point the Sith were a fading memory from 900 years in the past, and the Jedi had spent most of the past millennia successfully keeping the galaxy largely at peace. It's not surprising that confidence and surety would leave the door open for arrogance and hubris to creep in, little by little.

 

[FPAlpha]

Another excellent episode. I'm happy to see the predictions from everyone are completely wrong. Can't wait until next week!

Well, it went down exactly as i predicted from very early on, basically since we got the flashback episode from the point of Osha/Mae.

Jedi encounter other Force Users that are not Jedi, barge in unannounced and uninvited, throw their weight around which pisses off the other side and it escalates until something terrible happens.

Called out Quimir as the Dark Jedi/Sith also early on as did most of fandom.

So far the show has failed to make any twist a surprise, it develops exactly as most people predicted. Let's hope the finale at least offers some surprise - my bet is that Quimir turns Osha and they jumpstart the Sith tradition again with him as the Master and her as the Acolyte, while Sol either brings back Mae from the darkness or dies in the attempt in a fight against Quimir and/or Osha.

 

[Crewman6]

Nah, this is the worst.

Ashoka's biggest sin was that it was boring, Thrawn was great.
BoBF had the fantastic Mando episodes and finale.
Mando S3 was great.
Even Kenobi had a fantastic finale.

Maybe Acolyte can pull off a miracle in its finale too.

The Mando episodes in BOBF were utterly awful. Mando S3 was a complete shit show. Ahsoka was a pointless waste and Thrawn did literally nothing of value. Zombie troopers were among the dumbest moments in SW history.

This show just seems unfocused, but has good moments.

 

[Captrek]

SOL: Indara, I must face the council.

INDARA: Why would you do that to her? After everything this little girl has lost tonight, you’d take away her dream as well? Before you throw yourself at the mercy of the Council, ask yourself why you made this choice.

I don’t understand the logic here. Why would the Council knowing the truth take away Osha’s dream? Is the idea that Sol would be in trouble and nobody else would be available to take her on as Padawan? Or that Osha would find out and it would sour her on becoming a Jedi?

Also, I’m unclear on how the witches died. They just keeled over when Indara broke their spell over Kelnacca. Did she know that would happen?

 

[Commander Troi]

So the assumption is that the Coven came here because of the vergence and used it to create Mae and Osha; splitting one consciousness into two bodies . . . so they could inherit Aniseya's power and position? I think we're still missing some context here, but with one episode left I can't imagine we'll be getting any more insights into this.

I'm surprised noone else has mentioned this! The whole 1-in-2 thing caused me to go "what?" Is this why the twins are so different from each other? Are they literally 2 parts of one person? Why?

 

[137th Gebirg]

Star Wars has always been fascinated by force-using twins really since Luke & Leia became brother & sister in ESB (not sure if that was Lucas' plans as far back as ANH). Then we had the Solo/Skywalker twins in Timothy Zahn's books (Jaina & Jacen) and, while not twins, we have Rey & Ben (Kylo), the two of whom Palpatine refers to a "Dyad in the Force". Then, rolling back, we have the "Rule of Two" oddity that Lucas introduced in the PT (in-dialogue by Yoda - "Always two there are. No more, no less. A master and an apprentice.") about there only being two Sith, as if there can literally be ONLY TWO Sith at any one time in the universe, which always seemed ridiculous to me. Acolyte is just simply one more instance of continuation of this trope.

 

[fireproof78]

Star Wars has always been fascinated by force-using twins really since Luke & Leia became brother & sister in ESB (not sure if that was Lucas' plans as far back as ANH)

Really it was more in Return of the Jedi, when Lucas decided not to go forward with a sequel trilogy, and wrap up the saga at the end of ROTJ. So, Leia became Luke's sister, rather than Luke going on a journey to find her.

 

[137th Gebirg]

In ESB, as Luke was taking off to go to Bespin, ghost-Ben lamented, "That boy is our only hope", to which Yoda responded, "No, there is another." - a line of dialogue that has mystified fans for decades, particularly after the PT when Ben should have known about Leia's existence as Luke's twin. So Lucas had some idea what he was planning before ESB, but I agree that it probably didn't fully crystallize until ROTJ when he was putting the screenplay together.

I remember reading some hypothetical article at the time - perhaps Starlog - where someone theorized that it might be Luke's mother. Leia didn't even factor in back then, especially considering that rather passionate kiss she gave Luke on Hoth when he was recovering in bed.

 

[Captrek]

I'm surprised noone else has mentioned this! The whole 1-in-2 thing caused me to go "what?" Is this why the twins are so different from each other? Are they loterally 2 parts of one person? Why?

Transporter accident.

 

[Tuskin38]

I see people not understanding why Sol stabbed the mother

He thought she was killing Mae. Remember what Mae told him on the ship about the ascension requiring sacrifice? He misinterpreted what Mae meant (and to be fair, she worded it wrong) and thought she was being killed. Both of them were turning to smoke after all

This is probably the worst of the D+ Star Wars shows

Lmao, no, it's far from the first. It's probably a top one.

 

[Tuskin38]

n ESB, as Luke was taking off to go to Bespin, ghost-Ben lamented, "That boy is our only hope", to which Yoda responded, "No, there is another." - a line of dialogue that has mystified fans for decades, particularly after the PT when Ben should have known about Leia's existence as Luke's twin. So Lucas had some idea what he was planning before ESB, but I agree that it probably didn't fully crystallize until ROTJ when he was putting the screenplay together.

The original intention for that line was a completely different character, not Leia or a sister at all

Leia was not Luke's sister until ROTJ

 

[137th Gebirg]

So who was it supposed to be then?

 

[Tuskin38]

So who was it supposed to be then?

Ah I was partly wrong. It was Luke's sister, but the sister wasn't originally intended to be Leia but an unknown character that would have been introduced.