There are spoilers for “The Acolyte.”
Ever since I started watching Acolyte, I’ve been hoping it would go in a specific direction, but I wasn’t so sure Disney would allow it, at least not explicitly. You see, in the original Star Wars trilogy, the Jedi weren’t a real thing, they were just forgotten history, so the only idea most people had of them was fighting bad guys with glowing swords and magical powers cool guy. When the prequels came out, creator George Lucas was able to explore them more deeply, even into the politics surrounding them (a bold move that didn’t entirely work).
But in particular, it raises a question about the Jedi – are they really any good? Ever since the first prequel movie, The Phantom Menace , the seeds have been planted to suggest that there was actually something wrong with them. When Qui-Gon Jinn and his companions traveled to Tatooine, they did not free any of the slaves living there. In fact, the only reason Qui-Gon Jinn saved anyone (Anakin Skywalker) was because he believed the child was the prophesied one who would bring balance to the Force.
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I acknowledge that there may be more nuance there and bureaucracy can hinder engagement, but why would something like this prevent something that is morally right? Jinn also engaged in the classic Jedi act of taking a child away from his mother despite being too old to be trained in Jedi ways, which apparently set off the events of the original trilogy in due course.
Much of this is repeated and revisited in The Acolyte as well. When Thor, a character directly inspired by Jinn, meets the young Force-sensitive twins Osha and May, he immediately feels it is his duty to take them to train to become Jedi Knights, completely ignoring the wishes of his companion Indala. suggestion. After all, the twins were part of a coven of Force witches who, once again, were technically too old to undergo Jedi training (or, perhaps, as some have suggested, brainwashed).
When we get to episode seven, the penultimate episode of the series, we finally learn that Thor actually killed Osha and May’s mother, and that Indara and two other Jedi were involved in the killing. The murders of other members of the coven. It’s a brutal moment and an obvious indictment of the Jedi, and I’m glad the series is trying to explore that. Even the Jedi who returned to Coruscant, their de facto home base and political center of the Galactic Empire, ended up lying about the events of the show in order to protect themselves.
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It’s also taken us all season to get here, leaving a lot unconfirmed for Season 2. I think it’s safe to assume it will get one, we don’t know how successful it will be in the streaming era, but there’s a lot that needs to be said about the Jedi and their flawed approach. This is a prequel and I don’t expect it to address anything they did, they can’t unless Disney wants to create a completely separate canon. Still, there’s room narratively to make these criticisms and move away from the original trilogy’s simplistic presentation of good and evil that continues to plague much of the series.
It’s clear that showrunner Leslie Headland wants to delve into these themes, especially since the big bad, Ch’Mir, seems to be a lot more complex than Darth Sidious who just wants “unlimited power,” which is The manifestation of the dark side of the Force that I welcomed with open arms. Chimere’s relationship with Osha is also similar to the popular new trilogy ship Kylo Ren and Rey, but Osha turns to the dark side instead of Kylo turning to good. It’s asking if there’s a world that has more room for the Force than just the Jedi, so really, I just hope season 2 gets there because, frankly, the Red Light Swords are cooler.
