Review: The Acolyte

I’ve Fallen Deeply in Like

How do I declare that I didn’t hate The Acolyte – the latest in Disney+’s ever-growing line of Star Wars series – without having people immediately assume that I unconditionally loved it? Try this: I skipped over episode three (“Teach/Corrupt”) after the first few minutes. I could see where the plot – a flashback to the protagonists’ childhoods – was going right from the get-go, and the performances of the twins playing young Osha and young Mae (Lauren and Leah Brady, respectively) were so grating that I wasn’t strongly motivated to hang around. (Not the kids’ faults, btw – they’re child actors, they needed better direction and better writing).

But I kept coming back to The Acolyte, despite the efforts of some YouTube wags to declare it the worst TV series ever made (they have apparently never seen The Weber Show) or even some others branding it as merely mediocre. It is neither. I’ve seen mediocre, and it is Obi-Wan and Ahsoka. And I’ve seen bad, and it is The Book of Boba Fett. But series creator Leslye Headland was trying for something here, both in the story and the way it’s told, that I could not write off as just another, mammon-driven attempt to expand the franchise.

It's the story of two, Force-sensitive twin sisters, Osha and Mae (both played by Amandla Stenberg), who are separated as children when their Force-witch “mothers” are killed after the intervention of the Jedi and the destruction of the Force-witches’ stronghold. Osha is taken in by Jedi knight Sol (Lee Jung-jae) as his padawan (I’m going to presume everyone is up on the terminology; if not, accept my apologies), while Mae, who starts the fire that destroys the stronghold and is presumably lost in the conflagration, returns as an adult, mentored in the Dark Side by a mysterious Master and out for revenge. The series is essentially a dance between the two sisters – with many additional characters thrown in and copious detours to numerous planets – and an exploration of whether their reconciliation is possible.

It's not a bad premise at face, and Headland works some good inversions into the series, most prominently when Osha and Mae switch places – Osha coming under the influence of another follower of the Master (Manny Jacinto) and Mae masquerading as her sister to sneak her way onto Sol’s ship. Headland is in fact more successful in weaving shades of grey and out-and-out darkness into her scenario than Lucas ever was, and does better at removing the halo of unalloyed goodness from the Jedi, revealing their self-delusions and tainted motives.

There are copious flaws in The Acolyte – character actions aren’t always well-justified; humorous moments fail to land, and serious moments wind up unintentionally funny (Mae rebooting Osha’s toyetic, pocket-size droid by essentially doing a ctrl-alt-delete – which may or may not have been intentional humor – had me on the floor, anyway); and then there’s that whole third episode, which I guess I’ll have to finally watch to determine if it’s as cringe throughout as I first felt. But it breaks away from the Skywalker rut the franchise too often falls into (although fans who follow this more closely than I have pointed out the ways it ties back into that canon), and tells a different story with characters whose arcs are more complex than we’ve typically encountered with this stuff. That, I won’t dismiss. I’d say I want to see how it evolves in a second season, but Disney being Disney, I suspect if the show does get renewed, it’ll be with the directive, “Keep on doing what you’re doing,” which is exactly the wrong note. The Acolyte isn’t a speeder-wreck, and it’s not just a cynical brand extension. It dares to try something on the order of Andor, and if it doesn’t get anywhere near its predecessor’s heights, it’s still a notable effort.