After The Acolyte episode 5, I have a lot of respect for this show.

Spoiler Alert

In my previous post about Star Wars: The Acolyte, I essentially said that it was flawed but had potential. I was critical of the sometimes awkward dialogue and generally thought that the plotting/episode structures weren’t great. After another 2 episodes, I think that critique holds. For instance, I didn’t like that episode 4 ended right as the Sith-Jedi confrontation began. I get what they were going for – building suspense by ending on a dramatic moment – but I don’t think it worked. If they wanted to build suspense than they should have ended the episode part way through the fight with a main character in imminent mortal danger (to be resolved at the start of the next episode). By ending at the start of a set piece battle, I think they just killed the pacing (also I wanted to see that fight, not just its start and end).

On a more positive note, I also previously said that the show was dealing with some potentially interesting and unexplored themes and that I liked the characters. I further said, perhaps above all else, that I really liked the designs. I stand by this as well. I was particularly happy to see, in episode 4 and 5, the extensive use of yellow lightsabers. Technically, Star Wars has had yellow lightsabers for a while, but they’re never widely used or seen and as a kid that use to really bother me. Their inclusion now has resolved that minor but long standing childhood petty grievance. I’m thrilled.

The main reason I’m talking about The Acolyte again, however, is what happened in episode 5. Because it was great and I want to briefly discuss it before episode 6 comes out (later this week). Episode 5 sees the secret Sith’s identity revealed (it was fairly obvious but I still enjoyed it) and his confrontation with the Jedi. It starts with him successfully killing a host of unnamed Jedi extras who were presumably only there so that he’d have some unimportant Jedi to kill. This ‘unimportant extras’ who’re only their to die whilst some contrivance saves the main character, is an unfortunately common trope in a lot of recent Star Wars projects (and a lot of other media besides). It first started becoming really apparent, I think, in Star Wars Rebels where, after each weekly contrivance, the season villain would say “ah, but losing to the heroes was actually a clever part of my overarching plan”. It’s not good story telling and it makes the villain seem incompetent. But, although episode 5 of The Acolyte did have some silly contrivances (the Sith gets carried away by some giant bugs at one point), it ultimately didn’t do this. Instead, the Sith Lord unceremoniously killed two main characters!

I did like the characters in question and am a little sad to see them go, but I’ve got a lot of newfound respect for this show as a result. I really didn’t think they’d have the guts to make the Sith Lord a genuinely unstoppable killer. I thought that, after beating the unnamed and unimportant Jedi Knights, he would struggle to defeat the Padawan learner and then get distracted by a silly contrivance – giant bugs – whilst the named characters escaped. The episode did initially seem like it was going this way, but no. I was wrong. The Sith straight up killed the Jedi Padawan, and then killed another named Jedi. Now in retrospect, these characters were clearly created for the specific purpose of being killed off by the Sith, but I’ve got a fair amount of respect for that as well! They took the time to build them up and, by doing so, made the villain a genuine threat for once.

I’m very excited to see where thing’s going from here. Since the prequel era Jedi don’t know anything about the Sith’s return, I’m guessing that a few more major characters could get killed off before the end. And who knows, when Jedi Master Sol’s secrets are revealed, maybe it’s Osha who’ll become the Sith acolyte! I feel like anything could happen now and I’m loving it.

-Dexter