On The Acolyte, No Mystery Is as It Seems

Mystery and Star Wars go hand in hand. The franchise has, for the ideal component of half a century, devoted itself to answering mysteries huge and tiny about its galaxy—sometimes for fantastic or ill. But hardly ever has a Star Wars story been a mystery in regards to its genre, and The Acolyte embraces that structure wholeheartedly from the get-go… and then just as immediately flips these expectations on their head.

“Lost/Found” and “Revenge/Justice,” the two-component premiere of The Acolyte, hits the ground operating in defying these standard mystery genre tropes with a one particular-two punch in its opening ten minutes. Initially, on the planet Ueda, we witness the murder of Jedi Master Indara (Carrie Ann Moss), at the hands of the Force-wielding assassin Mae (Amandla Stenberg), setting up a mystery that is just additional than just “who killed this Jedi?” Mae pretty much desires to be recognized for what she’s undertaking, cloaked but not in shadow: she waltzes into the bar exactly where Indara is, tends to make no qualms of displaying who she is to her foe, and even growls a challenge at her, alternatively of striking unawares. There is no mystery right here in the sense of a victim and an assailant to be parsed out by clues—at least not by the audience, of course, as action ultimately heads to Coruscant we’ll establish the rest of the players in this “mystery”—that will eke out more than the course of The Acolyte’s season. What is right here is not a mystery, but a catalyst.

The other twist hits us and The Acolyte’s narrative promptly immediately after Mae calmly walks back away from the scene of her crime: light years away on a Trade Federation vessel, Amandla Stenberg wakes up to go about her day. But this is not Mae in disguise, this is her sister, Osha, a twin who has some quite intriguing history that becomes promptly apparent when her day goes sideways with the arrival of a Jedi aboard her employer’s ship. It turns out that not only does Osha have a history with the Order, and was a former Padawan, but now the Jedi have assumed, via witness testimony about the attack on Ueda, that she is accountable for Indara’s death. It is a classic murder mystery trope, but as soon as once again, The Acolyte is not interested in playing into these tropes straight. The case of mistaken identity that is clear to the audience is not left unclear to the Jedi for long—neither the Boy Scout stickler for the guidelines and former buddy of Osha, Yord Fandar (Charlie Bennett), that brings her in, nor Master Sol (Lee Jung-Jae), Osha’s former teacher, who is assigned to investigate Indara’s death on the pretense of maintaining points hushed up.

It is right here that The Acolyte essentially starts to inform you about its accurate mystery—and although the backdrop of this broader story about the return of the Dark Side to prominence via Mae’s mission as an acolyte on a trial for whoever her masked master is, is there, its greatest query is not about the revenge of the Sith, nor a phantom menace. Neither is it in the truth that Sol’s investigation is not necessarily about bringing Indara’s murderer to justice, but, as Vernestra Rwoh (Rebecca Henderson, and The Acolyte’s only direct character nod to the Higher Republic novels and comics that inspired its setting hence far) tells him, to make certain the embarrassing news of a Jedi becoming killed by one particular of their personal, former or otherwise, having out to their political enemies. No, alternatively, The Acolyte is a deeply individual mystery, one particular that brings all these characters—Mae, Osha, Sol, Yord, Sol’s existing Padawan Jecki (Dafne Keen), and Mae’s mysterious middle-man Qmir (Manny Jacinto)—mushed with each other to figure out just how they’re all truly connected by their previous lives… and how what ever occurred to shape them all into the men and women they are essentially went down.

We start to get snippets of that as Sol, Yord, and Jecki head to attempt and find Osha—who, immediately after becoming detained and shipped off to Coruscant by Yord early on in the initially episode, has located herself crash-landed on the icy planet Carlac. We understand from him that Osha was certainly telling Yord the truth, that she had a twin sister, believed to have perished in a fire on their homeworld, Brendok, in the inciting incident that saw Osha recruited by the Jedi. We understand that not only was Sol there, so was Indara—as nicely as two other Jedi, Torbin (Dean-Charles Chapman) and Kelnacca (Joonas Suotamo). What ever occurred on Brendok clearly haunted the Jedi involved—Sol’s face is carved in grief as he gradually opens up about just how difficult this investigation is beyond its surface, a grief that returns when he finds Osha on Carlac, in a moment that is equal components The Fugitive and Clone Wars’ “The Incorrect Jedi,” as she pleads to him that she wasn’t accountable for Indara’s death.

But we understand one thing a great deal additional vital to make The Acolyte’s individual mystery that a great deal additional difficult, and that a great deal additional connected to what the series desires to say about the Jedi at this moment in time—a stepping point in between their purported apex in the Higher Republic novels and comics, and the recalcitrant dogmatic bureaucracy it has develop into by The Phantom Menace: What ever essentially occurred on Brendok, the Jedi Order has been lying about it for 16 years—to themselves and their members, to their allies in the Republic, to the men and women involved in it and hurt by it, like Osha. And now, embodied by Mae and her master’s trials, it is blowing up in their faces.

It is this mystery that The Acolyte most masterfully weaves all through its debut episodes, even as the pace picks up as soon as Osha has teamed up with Sol, Yord, and Jecki to attempt and quit her sister from killing the rest of the Jedi that have been stationed on Brendok. It is there when Vernestra impresses on Sol just how secret this investigation has to stay, and in every single time she pushes back on him just undertaking the job of investigating a crime, rather than going with the (threadbare) proof they have to convict Osha of it. It is there in the truth that Osha obtaining a sister is not integrated in the Jedi’s files on her from becoming a former Padawan—peculiar, offered that you would believe that not only losing a household member in the incident that saw her recruited would be noted, but would’ve develop into a needed trauma for her to face and overcome as component of her coaching. And its there as the action heads to the planet Olega, when we and Mae alike understand straight from Torbin, who has taken a decade-extended vow of meditative silence to stay clear of discussing what ever occurred, that he’ll opt for death by her assassin’s poisons more than admitting what ever component he played—telling her with his final breath that what ever the Jedi did on Brendok, they believed they have been undertaking the proper factor.

That marriage in between the individual stakes of this mystery—Osha wanting to see what’s develop into of the sister she believed she’d lost, Sol pushed and pulled in between his duty to the Order and his duty as a Jedi, Mae herself becoming so driven by a require for justice for what ever the Jedi did, pushing her into the arms of the Dark Side—and what The Acolyte desires to say about the Jedi as an institution is brimming with prospective. It is clear that the sparks are only just starting to fly in these two episodes, particularly in Sol and Mae’s short confrontation on Olega at the climax of “Revenge/Justice”—and Mae and Osha’s similarly short reunion, when the latter attempts to fire a stun blaster on her sister alternatively of connecting immediately after all these years. But what ever The Acolyte has planned for its mystery is far additional intriguing than murder or a case of mistaken twin identities, that a great deal is clear.

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