Following last week’s disaster of an episode, as expected, Star Wars continues to go downhill under Kathleen Kennedy with Leslye Headland at the helm of The Acolyte.
In the fourth episode—the halfway point—it’s more of the same: drawn-out, boring storytelling that doesn’t make much sense or go anywhere. Hey, at least we got a couple of lightsaber scenes this time, eh?
The four episodes of The Acolyte are simply garbage. Aside from Lee Jung-jae’s portrayal of Master Sol, the series has no redeeming qualities or standout features.
In Episode 4, it’s more blah blah blah dialogue, pronouns exist a hundred years in a galaxy far, far away, and another highly anticipated character is proven absolutely useless.
Regarding the dialogue, Amandla Stenberg’s Osha and Mae are becoming tiresome. It’s the same thing over and over as Stenberg’s performance feels lifeless, which is really the directors’ fault. In this episode, there is constant dialogue with Dafne Keen’s Jecki Lon. Are we to assume they have a crush on each other?
How about the pronouns? So what’s going on is that Leslye Headland and woke Disney inject themselves into Star Wars through use of pronouns, which we all know doesn’t exist in the Star Wars universe. It’s the same with Disney and Marvel’s X-Men ’97 which which also uses pronouns that weren’t used in 1997. Do you feel better about yourselves now?
And the anticipated character, Kelnacca the Jedi Wookiee, proves absolutely useless in Episode 4, similar to what Headland did with Carrie-Anne Moss in the first episode. Throughout the first three episodes, there’s a significant build-up to Kelnacca. He’s an obvious nod to Chewbacca—big, badass, and he is a Wookiee who uses a lightsaber and the Force, and lives in a haunted forest! What happens? He gets killed while sitting on his fat ass in front of his computer! LOL.
Speaking of build up, where did Mae’s “180” come from? She’s already killed two Jedi, and now she is going to turn herself in and think that because of what she knows, everything will be alright? Seriously?!
Another issue with the episode is the use of Ki-Adi-Mundi which doesn’t fit with George Lucas’ use of the character in the prequels.
In the prequels, set a hundred years after The Acolyte, Ki-Adi-Mundi doesn’t believe the Sith could still exist and fails to recognize how far Count Dooku has fallen. Yet, in The Acolyte, it’s suggested that a Jedi has trained Mae or that she’s part of some splinter order.
The villain of The Acolyte could very well be a Sith. While this isn’t explicitly revealed in the series, it is believed to be confirmed. A hundred years before the prequels, Ki-Adi-Mundi encounters a similar situation where a Jedi, Sith, or someone else may have gone down the wrong path. This doesn’t fit with his disbelief and portrayal in the prequels.
The fact that his species only lives 50 years further adds to the confusion. While technically not George Lucas movie canon, why use Ki-Adi-Mundi in The Acolyte when they could have chosen someone from his own species or a different character altogether? It seems like someone at Lucasfilm thought it would be “cool” to include Ki-Adi-Mundi without doing their homework. It comes off as lazy, with a “who gives a fk” attitude, much like the first four episodes.
Also, as I mentioned in my previous reviews, these Jedi in The Acolyte don’t feel like Jedi at all.
In that scene with Ki-Adi-Mundi, they conspire to keep things secret from the High Council. They’re actually inspiring “fear and mistrust” themselves by doing so. Those are not Jedi qualities.
I also have to question: Is it normal for Jedi to be dropping like flies a hundred years before the prequels? Now, three Jedi are dead, and it doesn’t seem like a big deal. Additionally, as I mentioned about the last episode, the witch mom acted as if four Jedi dying were insignificant. What’s going on? These Jedi are nothing like how George Lucas portrayed them in his movies. Is this intentional?
While the episode comes off as a huge mess, there are three potentially cool things going on.
Once again, Lee Jung-jae’s portrayal of Master Sol remains the standout in the series. He tells Osha he has a secret to share with her, promising to reveal it later (of course). As I mentioned in my Episode 3 review, I hope there’s more to the story of how Mae killed all the witches.
The second potential cool thing is while the death of Kelnacca was lame, Kelnacca sitting there getting cut down by a lightsaber obviously means Kelnacca knew his attacker, right?
Or is this another case where Kelnacca’s guilt over events 16 years ago led him to let himself be killed, similar to how Torbin became so useless himself and committed suicide (and I thought that was the way of killing a Jedi without a weapon because Mae didn’t kill the Jedi, the Jedi killed himself???)
Update: The writer of the episode reveals the fight and death scene was cut from the episode.
The third potential cool thing to happen is the ending where I think if the show wasn’t a complete disaster and was much better written, we would have all liked it, but because it’s Kathleen Kennedy and Leslye Headland, it comes off as cringe as you can’t help but wonder how are they going to fuck it all up.
The villain uses a Force Push and throws back all the Jedi showing how powerful this villain has become. And yeah, once again, the Jedi are completely useless. Tune in next week.
The Acolyte Episode 4 is pure cringe. Quality storytelling is sacrificed for Kathleen Kennedy and Leslye Headland’s fan-fiction, disregarding George Lucas and the original fans. The good news is, it can’t get any worse, can it? This episode deserves a 2/10.
