That Girl At The End of the World

People complaining about The Acolyte misrepresenting or ruining the Jedi baffle me. The Order can still be on the whole a force for good in the galaxy but they stray from their path as soon as they start acting as an official arm of the state. They can’t be mystical, do-gooders and also serve as cops and government sanctioned missionaries. Institutions founded on benevolent ideas and filled with good, well intentioned people are still capable of being corrupt, inept, or dangerous.

Okay, as for reviews, I think my plan is to finish Bad Batch and then go through The Acolyte but review them not only a standalone episodes but how they fit into the larger picture of the show now that it’s finished. Hopefully I can working on these soon.

I like how Plagueis has a libertarian "I don't want anyone to tell me how to use my power" apprentice in Qimir and an authoritarian "I should be able to tell everyone what to do because of how powerful I am" apprentice in Sidious.

God, I fucking love The Acolyte

Some scattered Acolyte theories (spoilers for episode five)

The use of Kylo Ren's motif to accompany Qimir has to be intentional. It's one of the few themes from any of the films to make an appearance in the show so far and pairing it so clearly with Qimir at the episode's close must be doing more than simply recycling a familiar musical cue. From what we've seen, Qimir doesn't seem to have much in common with Kylo/Ben as a character. While Kylo Ren was a villain defined by his conflict and the weight of family legacy, Qimir is a self-declared nobody who comfortably inhabits his Dark Side beliefs.

So what if it's instead a callback to the Knights of Ren as a group? The exact origins of the Knights has yet to be established but we know from Marvel's Star Wars comics that they are an independent group of Dark Siders that have existed for quite sometime, possibly even further back than the events depicted in the Prequel Trilogy. While they would eventually morph into their own organization with separate ideologies and goals than the Sith, the musical callback alongside the visual similarities between Qimir's aesthetic design and Ren and his followers makes me believe that The Acolyte could be showcasing us the creation of the Knights as a purposeful offshoot of the Sith. It would be a fascinating storytelling detail if the Knights of Ren themselves began as an intentional red herring planted by the Sith to prevent discovery by the Jedi. One of the biggest questions hanging over The Acolyte is how exactly the Jedi missed this opportunity to discover the Sith over a hundred years before Palpatine executes their millennia long revenge scheme. While we already know that bureaucracy, ignorance, and fear of political scandal are factors at play here, the creation of the Knights as a scapegoat and smokescreen by the Sith feels like another element that's in play.

Hell, it even makes Ki-Adi Mundi's skepticism of Qui-Gon's claims in The Phantom Menace make more sense. What reason would he have to believe that the attacker Qui-Gon encountered on Tatooine was a Sith when a similar threat a century earlier ended up just being a member of a gang troublesome Dark Side offshoots. A problem, sure, but not the return of the Jedi's dreaded nemesis.

I spent much of the first few episodes of this show convinced that Sol was a fundamentally kindhearted man who was a witness to a terrible mistake the Jedi made on Brendok. Sol's tenderness towards Osha both in the past and present timelines of The Acolyte feels genuine and I'm not inclined to think that he's a devious enough liar to completely fake care and compassion for over a decade. I am, however, coming to wonder if Sol is perhaps hiding much more than we may think and might be one of the guiltiest parties at work here.

Much of this comes down to Qimir's inference that Sol did something to Osha. This feels like a much more pointed and personal accusation than Sol simply being present for the disaster on Brendok. Sol did something to Osha specifically.

It's obvious from how "Destiny" is directed that we are not getting the entirety of the story. Osha's perspective is shown and the events are confusing and chaotic. The Acolyte goes out of its way to make sure we barely see Mae or Mother Aniseya's experiences of that fateful night and I had assumed that we were dealing with a Rashomon set up that would reveal the truth after seeing different vantage points. But now, I'm beginning to doubt that what we even got from Osha is truthful. Even before she blacks out and wakes up aboard the Jedi's ship, there's a lot about what's depicted in "Destiny" that just doesn't make sense. A small fire spreads faster and quicker than it ought too. The witches all appear dead with no visible wounds. Sol's appearance is too sudden. Too much doesn't add up.

Basically, I'm starting to wonder if Sol used the Force to erase or twist certain memories in Osha's mind to cover up the violence on Brendok. Maybe the conflict between the Jedi and Aniseya's coven started out as a peaceful confrontation that escalated into violence through mistake and misunderstanding, but perhaps Sol is so concerned about the truth getting out that he would go as far to alter the mind of a child to keep his secrets. I've always felt that part of Sol's devotion to Osha comes from a sense of shame, but maybe that guilt runs much, much deeper than we think.

The other big leftover mystery from "Destiny" concerns the means and intents behind Osha and Mae's creation. Part of me does still genuinely think that the witches, being a matriarchal single gender culture, birthed both girls as a to ensure that their culture and tradition is passed onto another generation. I don't see Aniseya's ambitions stretching further than her coven on Brendok, particularly in how she views the Force as a Thread that cannot be pulled on without creating consequences. However, while the intentions may be fairly benign, I do not believe that Osha and Mae's creation was a bloodless act. The witches are clearly nervous about the Jedi discovering the true nature of their creation and it seems to stretch beyond their general distrust of the Order. Life doesn't come from nowhere and perhaps costs other lives in the process.

Now, here is where I put on my tinfoil. Like we're entering 2015-2017 Snoke theories territory here. I think Darth Plagueis assisted in the creation of Osha and Mae. One of the few things we know about the canon version of Plagueis is that he was obsessed with finding ways to use the Force to create life. It seems very possible that he might have collaborated with another Force sect for the purposes of experimenting and exploring these possibilities. The witches get the children they want. Plagueis gets knowledge that he deeply desires.

It answers the question of how Qimir knows so much about Mae and Osha in the first place. Sure, Sith are resourceful, but in order to manipulate Mae into becoming his Acolyte he would have to not only know that she existed but also possess extensive knowledge about her past. This feels like information that might come easily to Plagueis's current apprentice. And Sith apprentices sure do love training acolytes to help get their way to the top of the whole Rule of Two situation.

So what does this mean for Osha and Mae's future? There are many different directions to take their story from here and my thoughts about where they are headed as characters ultimately comes down to how definitive of an ending this (and maybe only) season of the Acolyte has. But to me, the groundwork seems laid for a particularly dark ending that sees Osha and Mae trading places. This has already happened in some sense given that Mae went undercover as her twin sister at the end of "Night," but I think The Acolyte is setting up an inversion of Light and Dark between these two.

Given her newfound proximity to Qimir, it feels all too likely that Osha slowly begins to learn the truth about what happened on Brendok and I don't imagine she's going to take it well, especially if my earlier theory about Sol proves correct. Depending on the degree of secrecy and lies, I could see Osha, even momentarily, lashing out violently at Sol upon learning the truth. And maybe she does the one thing Mae never could. Kill a Jedi without a weapon. We end this season of The Acolyte with Osha embracing the Dark and taking her sister's place.

So, where does this leave Mae then? We've also already seen evidence that of the two sisters, Mae is the woman who is most hopeful for a reunion and reconciliation between the two. Hell, she abandons her Dark Side revenge quest almost as soon as she learns that Osha's still alive. Mae may not be without sin, but with each episode I become more and more convinced that she's not a villain. She's a girl who lost everything is eager to cling to even the slightest shred of hope she can. And maybe, come season finale, that hope might be that she can save her sister from the Dark. That would be a hell of a set up for season two. If we get a season two that is. (Please make it so, Leslye.)

I know I’ve been so absent (partially because I got a paid Star Wars review gig that took up my time for a little bonus points if you can figure it out ) but that episode kicked ass on so many levels. Whew. Haven’t been as excited about live action Star Wars since the Andor finale. Maybe that’s the motivation I need to get these reviews done.

So obviously, I'm behind on reviews. Would people prefer that I finish The Bad Batch before writing The Acolyte reviews? Or would it be better for me to review Acolyte as it comes out and sandwich in the missing Bad Batch ones as I go?