Star Wars: The Acolyte Season One Pt. Four-They Have No Idea How to Tell a Story

• A waste of $180 million by Leslye Headland
• Is it even based on Star Wars created by George Lucas?
• June 4, 2024 to Present. Let’s hope not much longer
• Disney+

Cast

• Osha, Mae Aniseya-Amandla Stenberg
• Young Mae and Osha-Leah and Lauren Brady respectively
• Garethan Sol-Lee Jung-jae
• Yord Fandar-Charlie Barnett
• Jecki Lon-Dafne Keen
• Vernestra Rwoh-Rebecca Henderson
• Mother Aniseya-Jodie Turner-Smith
• Indara-Carrie-Anne Moss
• Qimir-Manny Jacinto
• Torbin-Dean-Charles Chapman
• Kelnacca-Joonas Suotamo

Guest Cast

• Tasi Lowa-Thara Schöön
• Mother Koril-Margarita Levieva
• Eurus-Abigail Thorn

A group of Jedi investigate a series of murders by a mysterious assassin.

What was the point of these eight episodes?!

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Choice

• Directed by Kogonada
• Written by Charmaine DeGraté, Jen Richards, and Jasmyne Flournoy
• July 9, 2024

The events of 16 years ago as told from the Jedi perspective.

Loved that this flashback episode reused footage from the other flashback episode while inserting additional scenes. It was like watching a special edition of a flashback episode. So amazing! Was that some money saving step. You would think $180 million would allow for extra cash. And who thought this was a good idea for series pacing?

What we got was largely the same story as Destiny but from a different perspective. This might’ve worked better if it was intertwined with scenes of the present. The visual presentation of a story being told. Dialogue could’ve cut some stuff out and it would’ve made this rehash a little fresher. There are no surprises in this presentation. No big revelations. Nothing that we had not discerned or were outright told prior to watching. Like this show as a whole, much is telegraphed in this episode. You would think given what the director is known for he could do better. Worse, the pacing is poor and the episode breaks whatever stride they were building towards the final episode.

We do get a better explanation of what brought Sol (Lee Jung-jae) and friends to scenic Brendok. All life was destroyed by a hyperspace disaster but now it’s back. They still do not explain how the giant building on the highest point in the area was missed. It just bothers me that they missed the whole fortress on the mountain. I understand they weren’t looking for it, but they landed very close to it and didn’t notice i? They are there studying this planet and it never got spotted in any way by any of their equipment? Seems to undermine their capabilities of studying things.

I have no idea what is going on with Sol. He becomes like some Peeping Tom pedophile sneaking and skulking around watching the twins. He’s also a bit of an idiot. He thinks the girls are in danger based on maybe two hours worth of skulking around. And what we see doesn’t make them look like they’re in danger. They mean something to this group.

Sol’s motivations seem out of leftfield. He’s very jacked up on getting Osha mostly and her sister Mae seems to be almost an afterthought. But why is he just suddenly filled with all this immense concern for them after meeting them for only seconds? It is like some pervert trying to take a kid. Then again characters in The Acolyte jump to conclusions like it’s an Olympic event and they’re going for a record.

We get a little more of a look at what the witches did to Torin’s mind. It does them no favors and is one more thing involving the theme of power and who is allowed to use it. It shows the Jedi were the better people to use it. These witches hijack people’s minds and use their powers to torment and trick people. It sounds like whatever they are up to is really bad.

Based on what we see in Torbin’s mind the witches engineered their own demise by making Torbin so needy to get back to Corusscant. They weren’t wise in the ways of the universe. They were kind of dumb.

And they try to make the fire okay by explaining Mae did not mean for it to spread but she was okay with fire roasting her sister? It still does her no favors no matter how much the people creating this tripe want it. They give the characters poor motivations such as feeling guilty over self defense and try to have it be some terrible thing. People make huge assumptions and act on them as if they are fact.

Why doesn’t anybody quarantine Torbin after his mind was hacked? At the minimum disarm him. On the surface he may act normal but you have no idea what those witches did especially since the Jedi seem to have no idea who they are. He is allowed to wonder around the camp unmonitored and allowed to keep on him a very dangerous weapon. Is it any surprise that he goes off impulsively to kidnap two kids? They took no precautions!

I read a great deal of comics in my youth. I read a few to this day. When I was a kid one thing that seemed very common was the story where you saw stuff that you didn’t see originally. The rest of the story as Paul Harvey might have said. Sometimes it didn’t make sense because you saw a whole lot more than even your juvenile mind could entertain had actually happened in the period of time originally seen. That’s what we get here.

The episode’s end credit song sounds like they were trying for a top 40 song that really doesn’t fit with the story or even Star Wars. It sounds like some shitty R&B love ballad. It is far worse than the Rihanna song for Star Trek Into Darkness. I laughed. One of the funniest moments of the series thus far.

How do you stab black smoke or whatever you wanna call what the head witch turned into? How does that make any sense? I would buy it if she was re-materializing or coming back together but she was going apart so there should be no substance there yet a lightsaber can kill. But then previously in Ahsoka Sabine Wren was able to get stitched up from her lightsaber stabs. Do these people even think about how things work in this fictional universe or should work? Probably not considering the illogical decisions characters tend to make and how their motivations change in order to complete the arc rather than as an outgrowth of events.

As an episode meant to enlighten the story, Choice doesn’t. It just makes things more confusing. Character motivations make little to no sense. And the additional information feels forced in and incongruous with the previous flashback episode.

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The Acolyte

• Directed by Hanelle Culpepper
• Written by Jason Micallef
• July 16, 2024

Stuff happens.

I don’t know if I’ve ever been so underwhelmed by a season finale. Ahsoka certainly came close to that with eight episodes just for the characters to switch galaxies. And I can’t say this is all that dissimilar but rather than switch galaxies our twins switch sides.

Season finales should wrap up storylines and act as a cap on any linked narrative or just be a nice “See ya later” until the next batch hits screens. They should pull storylines together. This does not. What was the ultimate goal of ANY character. What was the idea behind switching places with Osha? Mae confronts Sol and then runs off. It is more to yell at him than it is anything substantive. Then again yelingl and complaining gets confused with drama like in the fight between Mae and Osha that has all the energy of a rehearsal.

Shockingly Vernestra (Rebecca Henderson) is more important now than she was when the show started. At least as a presence. I guess it pays to sleep with the boss. Unfortunately Henderson can’t act and her face often looks like she’s holding in a fart. A biggie she thinks might be a wet one. With the revelation that Vernestra senses a familiar presence this makes the show more about HER past than what happened 16 years ago. So who or what was The Acolyte really all about?

Why did Mae need her memory wiped? Why not run off with Qimir and Osha and then split up? Leave the Republic and be harder to find? The memory wipe left her with her last memory at the age of 8 so why is she not more childlike? That would imply the totality of her experiences since are gone so any emotional maturing should be missing as well.

Not only do we get a cameo by Yoda, but we get what appears to be a cameo by Darth Plagueis the Wise that feels more than a little shoehorned in at the last minute. Having never been mentioned or hinted at during the entire run of the show he looks to be listening in on the conversation about the twins’ origin. It felt so random.

There’s a strong hint of a romance between Osha and Qimir. This is after he slaughtered everybody in front of her. Yord. Jecki who I guess they were hinting at some kind of romance between those two. But sure. Take up with a guy that just slaughtered everybody. It didn’t work between Padme and Anakin after she learned about the Sand People slaughter. I have no idea why they thought they could make it work here.

Stupidity moves the story forward. Sol never bothers to take the droid Pip away from Mae. Pip is a robotic Swiss Army knife. And he never notices her struggling to get it into position. It’s almost as if the writers couldn’t come up with a good idea and just engaged in lazy writing. Vernestra makes wild assumptions about events based on nothing.

Speaking of lazy considering there were fires and explosion 16 years ago and the witches’ settlement was severely damaged (that included power generation) how exactly where they able to get power to work again? Just twist a couple of wires and magically it is generating power. No need to cart around a generator or some kind of external power source. in the universe filled with space wizards and faster than light travel. Things work and don’t work in the show and this episode as needed for the plot rather than maintaining consistency and having an internal logic which governs everything.

The Acolyte pulls nothing together. It is just set up for a possible second season. Overall a disappointing finale to a disappointing series.

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This show was a massive disappointment. An unfocused story. Bad acting. Worse dialogue. What was the whole plot of Season One? It looked like it was simply to kill a couple of Jedi. Good enough. And then it took a brief turn as if there was some goal to infiltrate the Jedi temple. Interesting. And then it went back to his original story idea. Sort of. The good twin became the bad twin and the bad twin became a good twin because of reasons. But is this really all about a secret from Vernestra’s past? And worse none of it ever built. It never focused.

Much like a Ahsoka this whole first season was simply to set up the second season. It wasn’t a complete storyline. I can’t believe they spent $180 million on this. Skip the whole thing unless you’re a masochist.