Tuesday night’s episode of The Acolyte was probably its best so far, giving us more than just the fun action of Episode 5 thanks to a longer runtime that allowed for better pacing and a more fleshed-out story.
Still, I can’t help but think that this series has gone about its storytelling and the entire structure of this season all wrong. In ‘Choice’ we finally learn what happened all those years ago on Brendok, explaining Mae’s desire for vengeance and the Sol and Torbin’s remorse. Why make audiences wait for all of this instead of just letting us know from the outset?
Basically, Episode 7 brings us back to the Jedi’s mission to Brendok where we learn that they’re searching for something called a ‘vergence’ that could have brought life back to the planet rapidly. It was charted as lifeless a century ago, but is now verdant and alive. While there, Torbin expresses his frustration and homesickness.
One day, Sol encounters Osha and Mae in a scene we saw in Episode 3. Scenes here play out differently, however, and it’s a little confusing since we see scenes where Sol isn’t present despite this being an episode that is mostly from his point of view. Small details change, like how the fire was started and Mae no longer threatens to kill Osha.
In any case, Sol immediately feels a bond to Osha and when he sees Koril gets a sense of something dark and potentially dangerous. He insists that Indara and the rest go and check in on the girls, which she reluctantly agrees to. Once they confront the coven and press their right to test the twins, we see a new angle to what went down. Aniseya invades Torbin’s mind, paralyzing him after offering him her help to get home. He’s cast to his knees, his eyes blackened. It’s very, very Dark Side of the Force stuff.
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After this, Sol is even more worried about the girls and when he tests them and surmises that they’ve been instructed to lie, that worry grows. When they get the test results from the girls’ blood, they realize that these can’t be normal twins. They have absurdly high midichlorian counts but also perfectly identical symbionts, which isn’t possible in naturally born children. They surmise that the witches created the twins using the vergence, which is very Dark Force, indeed. Sol’s worry deepens.
Torbin, perhaps addled by the mind-trick Aniseya played on him, realizes that this would be proof of a vergence on Brendok and rushes off on his speeder to take the twins. Sol follows and Indara and Kelnacca get to the ship.
Here is where I diverge from my colleague Paul Tassi. I do not think Sol is a villain at all. I think he makes some rash decisions but those are made in a moment of duress with knowledge that these witches are doing very bad things with the Force. He is confronted with clear Dark Side practitioners who can not only invade minds, but also turn into black smoke monsters (a la Lost). When they reach the fortress, Koril has already set on a path of violence, going against Aniseya’s wishes. She is ready to kill but Aniseya wants to stop the fight.
She just chooses to do that in the worst way, turning into smoke in what can only be perceived by the Jedi as an aggressive and terrifying move. Sol stabs her, and you can hardly blame him. Then he and Torbin fight Koril and the witches until she also turns to smoke and invades Kelnacca’s mind. Only Indara is able to stop her and force—er Force?—the smoke witch out, which either kills or knocks out all the other witches who were lending Koril their chant powers. Whether Koril dies is the big mystery.
This was not a bad sequence at all, though I think the Jedi acting so rashly at so many points was weird.
My Version
Here’s how I would have done The Acolyte much differently but still kept to the basic story beats that we have in Leslye Headland’s version—minus the twins. In this version, there would only be one.
In Episode 1, I would have had a body discovered. The body, we discover, is that of a Jedi and they’ve been murdered. Two Jedi investigators show up on this distant planet to investigate what happened. These are Jedi Masters Sol and Indara. They have worked together a long time. There’s tension between them from some old wounds, but they’re partners and they’re on an important mission.
When they discover that the body is that of Indara’s old padawan, Torbin, they realize that this might have to do with them. At the end of the episode, another body turns up. Another murdered Jedi: Master Kelnacca, a Wookiee and another Jedi who they share a troubled past with. A past that goes back nearly two decades to the planet of Brendok. What if, Indara wonders, this has something to do with Osha, Sol’s padawan who left the Jedi Order under mysterious circ*mstances?
In Episode 2, the detectives would begin their search for Osha, following up leads and clues and traveling through some unsavory locations. We’d really see the underbelly of the galaxy as it appears Osha has been leading a very suspicious life these past few years, consorting with scum and villainy of the most wretched variety. Ultimately, they track her down but the moment they go to take her in for questioning, they’re ambushed by a dark-robed stranger. The stranger and Osha escape.
In Episode 3, we’d get the flashback to Brendok and the events that took place in tonight’s episode. Rather than focus on the kids and the silly chants, we’d just tell the story straight, showing the Jedi on their hunt for the powerful “vergence”—a nexus of Force power, basically, which we learn is the means by which the witches—Aniseya and Koril and their coven—have created Osha and her twin sister (who dies along with the rest of the witches in this flashback, and stays dead).
The thing I’d do very differently here is give Torbin a better reason for wanting to go home so badly. In the episode as it stands, he acts extremely rashly but his only motivation is “I want to go home to Coruscant” which is frankly ridiculous for a padawan on the verge of becoming a full Jedi. It wouldn’t be hard to show him having nightmares and other horrible side-effects of being on the planet. You could attribute it to the vergence, and emphasize that more when Aniseya uses her mind-control on him.
The other thing I’d change is the fire. Better to have Koril start it instead of Mae, and not a fire (since the fortress is made of stone) but a sneaky sabotage of the power unit that leads to it exploding, which she then blames on the Jedi, inciting the rest of the coven to her cause and undermining Aniseya’s pacifism.
I did like where the episode went in terms of Koril going fully hostile and escalating the conflict with the Jedi, and I’m intrigued by the witches turning into black smoke and possessing people, including Kelnacca who then fights Sol and Torbin in a pretty cool fight scene. I can even see how maybe Koril survives in this state and later infects Qimir, becoming the Sith, or perhaps some other more powerful Jedi, making Qimir her apprentice and having him track down Osha to bring over to the Dark Side. Certainly she would have lots of motivation for revenge.
There are lots of interesting ways this story could play out, but I’ve basically just described three episodes that I think make a lot more sense than the show we’ve gotten. This could then turn into a cat-and-mouse game where Sol and Indira track down the Sith as he continues killing Jedi associated with the Brendok disaster (just add a couple others to the original mission, or have their commander be one of the victims etc).
The way this story has been told and written squanders most of its potential. It could have been a dark murder mystery like Seven. The first time we see the Sith could have been like the first time Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman encounter Kevin Spacey’s character. Just imagine how dark and scary it could have been, while also working as a much better murder mystery.
Still, I didn’t hate this episode. I just wish I cared more about the story and the characters at this point. I’m interested in finding out the rest of the mystery, but I’m also annoyed that they dragged so much of it out needlessly into the second-to-last episode.
Watch my video review below:
Further Reading
My Previous Acolyte Reviews:
- Episode 6 Review
- Episode 5 Review
- Episode 4 Review
- Episode 3 Review
Other Musings
- The Acolyte’s Rotten Tomato Score Keeps Falling And Maybe It Should
- At my newsletter (subscribe!) I go into more depth on this subject.
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