Mini Series The Acolyte 1.03 - Discussion Thread (Spoilers Allowed)

Finally got around to watching this one. It was definitely the most interesting of the three so far, and the most ambitious. Not everything worked for me though, and I feel I have to give it a 6 like the previous one.

The Good

• Production Value - once again Acolyte is setting a new gold standard for what Star Wars streaming should look like. Beautiful landscapes, intricate costumes, appropriate ship and speeder designs, tasteful architecture, it just looks great. In particular I appreciated the subtle elegance of Sol’s lightsaber’s design.
• Ambitious Ideas - whatever else may be said about Acolyte there’s no doubt they are looking to introduce novel concepts and try telling stories we haven’t heard before, at least in Star Wars. When Kathleen Kennedy years ago said “the Force is female” it felt mostly like a marketing gimmick, but now we’re seeing something more involved. Watching this episode I was reminded of Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Mists of Avalon, which reinterpreted the Aurthian legend through a feminist perspective. Now, I’m not sure how well thought-out Acolyte’s feminist myth-making in Star Wars actually is - it may get better when we have the full story - but there’s no doubt it’s an interesting project looking to make its mark and that makes it worth watching imo.
• Sol - still the best part of this show imo and a great performance. He’s very much in the tradition of Qui-gon and maybe my favorite new Jedi of the Disney era.

The Bad

• Execution - while the concepts being introduced are interesting, the writing still feels too scattershot and sloppy to get me invested in these characters. Aniseya is gorgeous, magnetic and sensuous but I don’t get what she’s really about and what she wants. We have some allusions to her being oppressed, but she seems to say her witches are using the dark side of The Force, so that oppression should be warranted? Headland clearly wants her to come across as a sympathetic character but I’m just not feeling it. There are mixed aesthetics at play too, they’ve created a black woman lesbian sorcerer with vaguely West-African body art and while it all feels kind of exotic in a fun way I wonder if the line between tasteful and offensive here is a matter of brand marketing more than substance. I don’t get a sense of well-illustrated culture from the witches, just spookiness, and I can easily imagine another timeline where progressive-minded critics found it objectionable because there hadn’t been the correct degree of marketing to reassure them this product was “made by the right people for the right reason”. I don’t think there’s anything wrong here, although that’s due to there not being much substance, which allows people to interpret the identitarian signals however they like. Hopefully we’ll soon get a better sense as to why exactly the coven’s practices are radically feminine and objectionable to the Jedi Order, but right now it feels quite vague and I’m inclined to side with the Jedi by default.
• Writing - I’m usually not a stickler for little plot holes and loose threads (it’s Star Wars after all) but a few jagged edges stood out to me here. Most of all the destruction of the Coven temple/city. This was ostensibly the event which caused the silent Jedi to be so guilt-ridden he would kill himself as an act of contrition, and yet it’s this very ambiguous event. Was Mae really responsible? It doesn’t seem plausible that she could blow up a whole castle with a Zippo lighter but that’s what we see happen. The coven witches are all dead, by asphyxiation I guess? Well obviously it’s not convincing and there certainly must be something more going on, but the implausibility sucks out any drama. Another weak spot is the relationship between Aseniya, her partner and the kids, I just don’t feel the love. Critics have long pilloried The Phantom Menace for bad acting/directing but the mother/daughter relationships in Acolyte don’t hold a candle to Shmi and Anakin’s bond which feels truly affectionate with real chemistry from the actors. And that’s not the only sector where things unravel, which brings me too . . .

The Ugly

• Loosely Goosey Lorecraft - so much has been said about The Force in Star Wars over the years that it’s admittedly hard to come up with something both novel and appropriate, but Aseniya’s mystical lesson to the kids doesn’t feel right. The Force is a “string to be plucked”? What does that mean? Is it supposed to inform her creating twin babies without reproductive sex? I’m sure there will be endless debates over whether this “immaculate conception” de-canonizes the Prophecy of the Chosen One, I don’t care about that. There could be any number of explanations to get around this and so far it hasn’t *really* contradicted anything in the Lucas saga. My issue is that it doesn’t feel well-crafted, the witches’ mysticism doesn’t convey wisdom like Yoda and Jedi could from the saga films. Asineya says her interest in The Force is “power and those who can wield it”. Thus far I think that’s as deeply as the writers have thought about this as well. Hopefully we’ll get richer material soon, but so far I’m not impressed.

 

There seemed to have been some kind of large explosion beforehand, and a bunch of yells, and then silence.

 

I hope they thought this through carefully.
It would be a pity if they pulled a BOBF, where fans' theory were much better than what they came up with.

 

Right now I think the likeliest explanation is that the witches were playing dead and burned down their temple themselves to get the Jedi off the trail. The witches will pop up again and it’ll be a big moment.

 

Not everything (or even anything) that the witches say is meant to be taken as objectively correct. They have a different set of beliefs about the Force and may be right about some things and wrong about others - just as the Jedi are.

 

it can also say pigs fly on Wikipedia. Wookieepedia is created by fans/public and not an official source. I didn’t get the couple but that they are both considered Mothers of the coven. And more in cahoots on how they decided to create and bring life into the coven. It seems for the purpose of continuing their lineage, but I think it was for more nefarious reasons and Mother Aniseya got too attached yet knew she had to let them go.

there’s a deleted scene in Alien where Ripley comforts Lambert and touches her face. I don’t think comfort or affection mean ****** relationship.

 

Exactly that! It is pretty obvious to me that we see the beliefs of the coven and that in no way we are presented this as “this is the new concept of the force”
It’s just what the witches believe

 

Still could have been Mae. We see earlier how she’s trying to squeeze that butterfly to test her power limits. She’s okay with killing even as a kid. Maybe she did some other stuff off screen all rather quickly.

 

It's frustrating how so many people fail to grasp that just because a fictional character says something with certainty, it does not mean that that's what the creatives involved believe.

They are literally having a debate over their religion. The Force will always have ambiguity, and the Aniseyas, Yodas, and Snokes of the galaxy won't always make statements that are objectively true in-universe.

The question of whether free will truly exists in the GFFA is very interesting to me, but it's one that I'd rather see continue to be the source of conflict than receive a definitive answer.

 

I think I need to watch this episode again. I felt it was straight forward to what happened but hid something in plain site. Like maybe one of the women was a sith or similar living among the witches and using their ritual. Like when Dooku takes Savage in TCW.

I can't decide why four Jedi were needed to survey the twins as candidates. Maybe they were just a means to talk to the witches and get to a hidden enemy. Tragically the entire clan was wiped out when the Jedi underestimated the situation and they are caught the middle. That's the person who was waving the red saber around at the end of the first mission.

I had thought maybe the bows (or since of them) shot standard bolts not arrows and maybe one was reflected into the core there that caused a seperate explosion from the fire. Perhaps releasing toxic fumes. - shrug. -

 

My overall thoughts: I think this episode was functional enough, doing an adequate job of setting out the basis of the central mystery and probably sowing the seeds of major endgame character decisions. The writing and performances felt a bit wonky though and the attempts at building tension felt a bit flat. The new characters didn't feel as layered as Sol, Osha, Yord and Jecki immediately did in the first 2 episodes. 6/10.

 

Spoiler

I think Aniseya Koril or Qimir it will be the Sith but i think it would make more sense for it to be one of the mothers or a witch it would be a good plot twist if Mae died and Osha became the new Sith Koril tells Aniseya that she created the twins with unnatural powers maybe its something from the Dark Side?

 

Watch out for the two hooded figures that stand at the sides of aniseya during the ascension I think something is up with them

 

Babu Frik and Meebur Gascon in mech suits.

 

Meebur Gascon returning to the screen in live action would make me literally jump up and down on the couch.

 

Bor don’t spoil!

 

I definitely would not be surprised if there's more Sith involvement with what we saw in E3. If the Jedi are interested in the Coven, why wouldn't the Sith be too?

 

Per the website Polygon regarding episode three:

The third theory is the simplest of all: The Acolyte is simply a deeply unserious show, interested in saying something new about the Jedi, the Force, or the Star Wars universe more broadly, but too concerned with appearances to get the details right — both in terms of storytelling and lore. This theory suggests that there’s no more to the events than we saw on screen: Mae lit a fire in an attempt to kill her sister; it got bigger than she thought and had far-reaching consequences that she blames on the Jedi while shirking her own part in it. With this theory, even if the Jedi did a few things wrong, it would still wash out, with most of them being heroic in the end, leaving everything basically in the same place it started.

https://www.polygon.com/star-wars/24176253/star-wars-acolyte-mae-osha-force-cult-witches

I won't be surprised if this is what the outcome ends up being.

 

It's difficult to judge this episode by itself... as it does feel like we're only seeing *a* version of events that happen and not *the* version. For example, when everyone is back on the Jedi ship, we see that Torbin has the face wounds from the fight with Kelnacca... yet we don't get to see the fight in this episode. So what appeared to be a relatively humdrum episode will, I'm sure, be able to picked over once we have the fuller picture. I mean... do Jedi routinely perform 'memory wipes' as Qimir indicated in the last episode? Osha certainly seemed to be missing some recollection at the end...

 

Having finally gotten around to watching this;

I 100% think that Darth Plagueis is a benefactor for the witches/created the twins and the tribe was wiped out to prevent anyone from blowing his cover.

I don’t see Aniseya as being a secret Sith; also, it explains why all the Jedi who were present that day have to die. They witnessed something peculiar that can link back to the Sith…

 

The Jedi using poison would break SW for me. Dark, Light or Extra Crispy, I cannot envision a situation where the Jedi can justify such action. However, it doesn't mean it wasn't used. The Bunta tree/poison has a role in this story, and could have been used, but not by a Jedi Hit Squad.

Another thought, the Jedi have been supporters of the Republic for millennium. No doubt laws could have been passed in favor of the Jedi having some kind of legal control of the Force, no matter how impossible that actually is.

 

This was the stupidest Star Wars I’ve ever seen. I just can’t believe it. I’ve been a massive fan for 45 years. And I’m not even going to start listing everything wrong with this series and this latest episode because the Internet has already blown up with people saying the same things I feel. RIP Star Wars. I’m out.

 

I don’t think I whatever happened was totally intentional. I think it’s a series of mistakes and misjudgments that quickly unfolded or escalated. And then the Jedi sought to cover it up. (For either their protection, the Republic’s, or maybe even OSHA’s)

I’m expecting that this episode is largely a … false memory and we’ll see how it really played out, I think Torbin made a mistake or knows something he had to keep secret and can’t forgive himself.

Stop playing the victim. If you have criticisms of the episode (and there are legitimately plenty of them) you’re free to discuss them. Right now you just sound like you’re whining about something other that. SW,

If you can’t do that … adios,