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

There's a subtlety there being missed.

One is created BY the Force.
Others are created unnaturally by force USERS, with the dark side.

These others past existence doesn't negate Anakin as being the only being created BY the Force itself, in fact, their existence might be the real reason that the Force created Anakin in the first place. If Anakin, a force created being, is the answer to the unbalance, then it might stand to reason that the imbalance is caused by dark siders trying to create ... life.

 

Mace should have known that four would not be enough.
For other things, a gang of four is just right:

Spoiler

 

Which to me correlates with: Darkside Witch Cult using the Darkside for unnatural reasons. I don't see what's vague.
(EDIT: I do believe the witches don't think there is any harm using the Darkside)

Anakin on the other hand is more ambiguous, but I don't believe Anakin's birth had anything to do with the Darkside other than as a response to the inbalance it had caused, so from my perspective it's all good.

 

Even The Darth Plagueis book says it a counter balance to what Palpatine and Plagueis are doing.

 

Which is not confirmed. Whether you want to say palpatine tried but failed, that he said it randomly to anakin who didnt get didnt take the hint anyway and the force really created him alone. None of this is officially confirmed. All this show does is say yes you can create people with the force. Which if anything is more problematic to that theorg and doesnt help the concept that Anakin couldn't have been created by someone.

 

Um. That's why I said "it MIGHT stand to reason".

However, what is confirmed is that Palpatine did not create Anakin. In Palpatine's own story, is was Darth Plagueis who had this power, not Palpatine himself. What is also confirmed is that Palpatine is lying to Anakin. He tells him that he can teach him how to save those he loves from drying (also a power that Plagueis had) if he becomes a Sith, and then immediately after fesses up with by saying "and we'll discover this power together". Plagueis it seems didn't teach his student all his wisdom, probably for good reason Which is probably the reason he killed his Master in his sleep, which is the only thing that Palpatine seems to actually gloat about doing himself.

You can believe Palpatine's lies if you wish though.

 

I mean, why would palpatine kill his master for NOT teaching him all he knew? Surely you keep him alive for as long as he can to gain that power.

Id say creating life and stopping death are different though. We apparenly NOW, more officially know its possible to create life. But stopping death is a much larger promise. Only one was really aimed at Anakins vunerability. Only one of them really made anakin turn and say what did you say?

It is not confirmed anymore so then deciding for yourself whether Plagueis existed at all and that palpy wasnt just enoying his own made story A LOT.

 

It's exactly because of nonsensical storytelling like Reva's story and bunch of other goofy things that happened in TBOBF and Mando Season 3 that don't have me convinced that this show is going to make sense of what happened in episode 3 of the Acolyte.

 

Well this show has a writers room and two other shows had single writer

 

A: Because they're evil and selfish.
B: Because that's what Apprentices do. They want the power that the Master has, and as soon as they think they know that power, they plan to kill them to take their spot. If Plagueis isn't going to teach Palpatine all that he knows, that his Master has outlived his usefulness. Its not at all far-fetched to see Palpatine becoming angry that his master won't teach him something, and then killing him for it.

 

I'm finding it all a bit stiff and rigid with regards to the acting/dialogue/cinematography etc... It reminds me of those studio-based sitcoms and daytime soap operas that filled the airwaves in the 1990s. I know it is not cool to plop on child actors, but the interplay between the young Osha and Mae was almost robotic. The whole episode felt emotionally sterile. It's like all actors have a rod taped to their backs. Dafne Keen seems to be the only one who appears relaxed in their role, so her lack of presence in this episode was sadly missed.

Some of the dialogue concerning the Thread seemed contradictory. The Jedi seemed duplicitous and disingenuous. When Obi-wan reminisced about the good old days to Luke, I never imagined the Jedi Knights to which he was referring, would be the kind of people you'd find lurking around the woodlands spying on kids. The classically romantic notion of nobility and chivalry has been scrubbed away and replaced by something that, as of right now, I don't fully understand. It's all a bit grimy. It may be cliched, and a bit old hat, but I like my heroes to be heroes. Unashamedly so...To be fair there are enough episodes left to turn this particular grievance around.

I don't mind the mumbo jumbo about Threads, or the Force, and all the other mystical muesli they toss in willy-nilly, but this flapdoodle needs to be executed in an efficiently digestible manner. Otherwise, it just becomes white noise. And we've heard it all before. We've had mysterious conceptions before as well. Wasn't this show supposed to be free from the shackles of previous Star Wars tales and tropes, and yet here they are in classic Star Wars retread mode?

How many more flashbacks are we going to get before the backstory is fully elucidated? The Jedi's perspective, Mae's perspective, the Coven's perspective, the mysterious hooded figure who was in the background at the ceremony's perspective? I miss the art of good old linear storytelling.

Lazy theory time, Torbin gets possessed and goes bat****crazy and murders all the witches. Why he waits 16 years to top himself is anybody's guess.

The mysterious hooded figure probably has no relevance and is nothing more than set dressing. Booo!

 

I've heard that the event covered in this episode is going to be a Rashomon situation but as far as I can remember each of the perspectives told in Rashomon made sense and stood on their own whereas that's not how I feel about this episode. Admittedly I haven't seen Rashomon in years but I don't remember watching the first perspective of the story and thinking, "wait a minute! That doesn't make any sense!"

If they are going for a Rashomon story this first perspective should've been able to stand on it own without all the clunky storytelling. I don't like that when people point out the weird logic and clunky writing on this episode other people say, "It's because we haven't seen the full story yet!!! Have some patience!" I think they could've told this story from one characters point of view without all the clunky parts. Instead it feels like they went, "Well the way this is edited makes the story a little silly and awkward but once we tell the other side of the story it'll all work out." The first part of the story shouldn't be awkward and silly.

 

I'm leaning towards this is Osha's memory of the events, which was heavily, if not fully, changed by the Jedi to cover up some other event unknown to us still, to keep that event a secret, or due to some other trauma that she experienced in order to help heal her.

 

Possibly but I also won't be surprised if there isn't as much to it as we think there is. We might learn that Torbin took a vow of silence because he felt guilty that the Jedi crashed the witch party and tried to recruit Mae and Osha even though the coven clearly didn't want any part of it and that lead to everything going pear shaped. That might be all there is to his story. As to why his face is bruised? Maybe the fire caused something to fall on him?

 

I would even argue that it's not even a subtlety.

This is why the whole thing with the twins doesn't bother me as much. Anakin's birth is a completely different situation, with the only commonality between those two situations being the lack of a father, which makes both of these events unnatural.

But there is something troubling about this whole idea of the twins being born because a dark side manipulated the midichlorians (if that's what happened). It is impossible to suspend disbelief when one thinks that Palpatine, one of the most devious, powerful and intelligent dark side users in the history of the galaxy continuously failed to create life even though that was one of his most prioritized and important goals. Are we supposed to believe that this Covenant which is clearly less impactful and powerful than the Sith, somehow managed to achieve the immaculate conception of not one, but TWO force users so easily? I know this whole situation will probably be developed even further, but for the witches to succeed with much less knowledge and power than Palpatine where he failed, is definitely problematic.

 

Well we know there will be more flashbacks if you follow all the teasers.

 

I feel like this wouldnt be big enough to want to kill yourself over. There is guilt and there is someone feeling they deserve to die for something they did

 

Although, that Palpatine was ... 'forced' to use clones and not some force created army is something. Perhaps because he doesn't have this knowledge firsthand, he has to rely on more unnatural technologies to advance his cause.

Even without these powers, Palpatine is still the major threat. In fact, if he were to have these two powers as well, on top of everything else, perhaps he would be unstoppable.

 

We know palpatine has his hand in dark magic. Rebels showed he was almost able to get into the world between worlds. But him creating life using the force wouldnt be anything more than an experiment. Because ultimately Anakin was just a regular person born from a regular mother. Nothing that palpatine can use because that kid still has to grow up. So this and stopping death are very different things. Palpatine used clones because they could be genetically changed to age faster or have whatever else.

 

I really don't think so, and I hope not. The story really isn't framed as a memory or retelling. Yes, it is from Osha's perspective. Yes, there are events unseen that probably don't happen quite how this episode would suggest. But that is much different than being from an unreliable telling of the events we directly experienced.

 

Yeah, the primary motivation of Sidious studying the manipulation of life was to preserve his own in perpetuity, not to create new life. Though it seems later on he switched over to attempting to create a perfect vessel for his spirt.

As for the clones thing, even if he has this power, the technique A. Still requires a surrogate mother, B. Grow up at a normal pace, C. Aren’t going to have order 66 literally implanted in their brains. Where’s Palpatine getting a few million surrogates to raise a slave army for twenty years.

 

Was debating between giving this a 7 and an 8 gave it an 8 to balance out the 1s.

 

Just standing back here all Sith like. ..



I thought these hooded peeps were witches, similar to the ones with bows we see a moment later. But this fellah is gone once the Jedi show up. As if he jumped off the cliff.

 

We know nothing, or very, very, little about how the twins were created. They could have easily done something evil, like sacrifice, to create new life. As much as I want to debate these things, my knowledge base can only speculate, more feeling than anything else. I'm going to try and hold off until more facts drop, not speculation.