Mini Series The Acolyte 1.07 - Discussion Thread (Spoilers Allowed)

I generally agree I like a symphonic score but I also like Diversity in Star Wars every movie and TV show to be different kind of like MCU is doing especially with there shows!

 

There is a particular actor who was announced to be part of the cast but has not yet made an appearance to my knowledge. I think we'll see the master next week.

 

Sol killed Osha & Mae's mother. That's accurate.

Sol didn't murder their mother. Momma made an aggressive action - even if the intent wasn't there, Sol couldn't just stand there and wait to see what happens.

It's very nuanced. Sol wronged Osha by hiding the truth - but there is compassion in what Indara plotted. Osha had already lost everything, why saddle her with more at that age?

Sol had to make impossible choices. He did the best he could.

 

I agree we’ll see who the Sith Master is but I don’t think it’ll be him. At least I hope not.

 

Part of me wonders if they filmed these scenes first because I found Sol’s accent stronger here than previous episodes. Even if that’s the case it still kind of works on some level. Presumably he has an accent in the GFFA because he’s from a place that either doesn’t speak Basic and he learned it and improves on it 16 years later or he does but they speak it with a different accent and his accent softened from this time on Coruscant. Both sort of make sense. It’s 16 years later.

 

i actually like the song at the end (shazamed it -- " Power of Two " by Victoria Monet)..
but it did feel kinda outta place. pretty traumatic episode for that song to play during the credits, lol.

 

So, the big mystery revealed, and it seems to be primarily a tragedy of haste and mistrust. I have to admit I was hoping for this, it seemed out of character for the jedi to just massacre everyone, but I can see why others are disappointed it was so straightforward after all the buildup. And certainly I agree that it could have been fleshed out a bit more, I really wish they did longer seasons and episodes.

A lot of people were expecting Indara to be the most hard line jedi but turns out she was probably the most chill on the mission.

Sol, meanwhile, tried to play dashing hero who doesn’t play by the rules and finds out that maybe he should, in fact, play by the rules.

A vergence – that is a term I haven’t heard in a long time. Long time. Really got overshadowed by the midicholrian controversy.

Great Disaster mention. Was not expecting that, but very welcome.

After all the Nightsister theorizing, amusing to see it happened in-universe as well.

Wonder if those witches were even dead before the fortress collapsed, or just knocked out.

Still some questions unanswered though, particularly what happened with mother Korril. Simple lose ends or will the last episode have yet more revelations? Certainly going to be a busy episode in any case.

Best joke I have seen about the episode: “Somebody blew up the witch control ship.”

 

I dunno the song kinda fits the series for me lol. Epitomizes it in many ways.

 

I liked the fight against the wookie. Other than that, jeez there's so much that is either dumb or I dont get it. How do you kill all those women by doing nothing other than severing a connection to another mind? That was the dumbest thing I have seen yet on this show, other than the chanting in Ep.3. The way they cut out at the end was really sloppy, the song at the end is as out of place as the hip hop music in the Gladiator II trailer.

I still dont know where this series wants to go, Osha and Mae seem to be more of mcguffins than main characters, and the actions of the characters seem to lack any discernible direction. I think Im more confused than angry at this show.

 

As an observer, I agree with you. However, there's just no way that Osha or Mae could take this any other way. You don't get objective about the reasons someone might stab your mother, a mother who was very clearly an amazing freaking mother (seriously, hats off to Jodie Turner-Smith who I think was the unsung highlight of the season). I think we all see where this is going and finding out Sol killed Mother Aniseya is what causes Osha to turn to the dark side.

 

Remember when people were saying there was no way Mae could've made that big of a fire? Stone doesn't burn like that....

Also Sol's obsession with Osha was really weird. Ruined his character for me.

 

I like mysteries as much as the next person, but this didn’t need to be dragged out so long, and given two episodes

 

It wasn't the stone that was burning. It was oil that spilled out of the lamp.

 

Well the lyrics were Star Wars lyrics they sang about The Rule of two for instance!

@Sarge
Good point the oil from the lamp was what ignited the fire then it reached the electrical console for the door!

@BalanceOfTheForce
I hear this brought up often that a show could have been added to another show not two shows, 1st of all I'm not a Hollywood director I have no idea how to make a show or movie 2nd of all if two shows or even 3 were combined then it would be too long and a shorter season. I like the flashback episodes there well directed and nice bookends and a nice way to tell a story. I assume Sol was telling all that to adult Mae...

 

We saw how they got in Torbin's head, we should've seen how they got in Kelnecca's head. The whole sequence should be Mother Koril talking, in Wookie speak with subtitles, about how Torbin wouldn't eat Kelnacca's cooking.

 

That would have been to much not everything has to be explained most viewers can figure it out.

 

That did seem super forced.

 

Sol is creeping on little girls in the forest like Michael Jackson at Neverland Ranch. He then forces everyone into kidnapping the one he liked best.

Lucasfilm is in desperate need of some new creative executives.

 

They really showed how powerful Indara was in this episode with her takedown of Kelnacca and the witches, which made the way she died all the more ridiculous imo.

 

And to think, all this time we assumed that whining and immaturity were purely Skywalker traits! Apparently not so much. Meanwhile, Master Indara swears she will never babysit kids on a camping trip again...

But on a serious note, there's a bunch to unpack here. In no particular order, just a few points:
- I don't think we have any evidence that the twins were created using the Dark Side. Using the Force, yes. But the witches' powers seem to span both Light and Dark, and why should we assume that the creation of life is Dark? (I'm not saying it won't turn out to be, just that it's an as-yet unsupported assumption.)
- Are the twins the Vergence which restarted life on the planet after the disaster, or was their creation possible because of there was a pre-existing Vergence there?
- Note that the Jedi don't focus on the Force creating life at all. In fact, I don't think they realized. "They have no father" can mean a lot of things - I'm guessing that assisted reproduction exists there. No, what the Jedi very specifically focus on is that the twins have the same exact midichlorians, and that they think they became twins by one consciousness being split into two. This is a big deal to them, and they jump to the theory that it's connected to the Vergence.
- Also note, the Jedi's original interest in all this is to study the Vergence. A lot less sinister than some earlier theories on Jedi motivations.
- I don't think the smokey-cloud thing is connected to the mind control/possession. Aniseya mind-spoke and controlled Torbin in the first confrontation without doing the smoke thing.

More thoughts later...

 

Was it oil, or was it witch hazel?

 

There are moments when a show or movie loses me entirely. When a character dies so bad in a way the character does not deserve it, if established characters do something that is totally out of place and against any motivation of that the character or if something is written so badly, far fetched and manufactured that a five year old child could write it better.
It's moments like Jean Grey killing Mystique, Lagertha killing Aslaug, Luke falling from a Stone after being a coward (and literally everything else in TLJ), Denaerys being an insane Meme in whole GoT Season 8.
Sol being a stalking creep, stabbing witch mom in a total out of place action really climbs the charts of show killing moments.
For having a whole episode of what we have already seen combined with five or six absolutely fabricated unbelievable bad written pivotal moments this episode gets 1/10 from me. The 1 point is for the runtime being 42 minutes. Oh dear....

 

The wait was worth it.

It’s arguable that no other Star Wars series placed as much of its success in the buildup to one revelatory dramatic moment, and The Acolyte delivered. Yes, other series have had plenty of major moments, but none have fundamentally changed our perception of a main character in the same way as “Choice."

Sol killing Mother Aniseya and taking Osha as his student without telling her the truth is really bold stuff. And I’d even argue that while the execution of the moment wasn’t entirely perfect, what really sold me wasn’t Aniseya’s death itself, but Sol’s reaction to it. His utter despondency while blocking Mother Korril’s attacks was just devastating. I always thought Lee Jung-jae was strong in this series, but with this episode it’s clear he’s really turning in one of the great performances and character arcs in all of Star Wars.

Elsewhere, the big surprise for me in this episode was how much I dug the dynamic of Indara and Torbin. While I might have preferred some more lightsaber action from Carrie-Anne Moss, what I appreciated even more were the nuances of her performance as a clear voice of reason. I’m really glad Indara was afforded more dimension. I liked Torbin too, and his impatience with the mission worked fine for me as a catalyst for the conflict. And even though this story was largely shown from the Jedi point of view, the Aniseya invading Torbin’s mind sequence was so spooky, seductive and disorienting. Great stuff.

While the lightsaber madness of “Night” was always going to be hard to top, I dug the Sol and Torbin vs Kelnacca fight. It was pretty well staged and once again made smart, selective use of slow motion for key beats of the fight. In general, I think Kogonada’s direction has been not only some of the best in this series, but among the best of any Star Wars series. He’s got a real sense of framing and pacing that let both “Destiny” and “Choice” breathe. Maybe the one truly puzzling thing here was how Indara managed to kill all the other witches who were possessing Kelnacca. On the one hand, it’s pretty vague, but I’m also kind of willing to roll with it. Oh, and of course, how Mae survived her fall after Sol chose to save Osha. I'm guessing Qimir has a role to play in finding her at some point...

All in all, after so many other Star Wars series in which we’ve been given piecemeal backstories that feel like morsels at best, it’s so satisfying to get a flashback this layered, thoughtful and emotional.

9/10