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The Acolyte: Season 1: Episode 8: The Acolyte

What is it ? : We left Osha putting on Qimir's helmet, and she has a vision of the death of Sol, Qimir attempts to remove the helmet, and his eyes turn black as if controlled by the witches, but he manages to remove it. He then heads to his ship as he says he knows where Mae and Sol are, and Osha says they'll go together. As they depart on the ship, a figure watches them leave.
Aboard Sol's ship he tries to explain what happened, but Mae uses the reset Pip to free herself and flees to a docked starfighter launching and heading into the rings of Brendock with Sol in his ship pursuing. Bazil tears out some control wires and the larger ship collides with the starfighter causing it to crash onto the planet, with Sol landing later and heading for the fortress.
On Coruscant, Master Rwoh meets with a senator, Rayencourt, who asks about the investigation and why it hasn't been reported to the Senate. She tells him that the investigation is still occuring, and he objects. The two display opposiing points of view, Rayencourt believes the Jedi have too much power to be allowed to act as a cult of warrior monks, whereas she believes that the Jedi should be allowed to administer themselves. Afterwards Rwoh is told that Sol has turned his transponder back on, and they've tracked him to Brendock, so she orders all Jedi which can be summoned without causing alarm to accompany her there.
On Brendock, Qimir and Osha arrive, and Osha begins rewiring the doors to open them, but Qimir disappears, she enters the fortress. Within Sol is searching for Mae, and Mae has gone to Osha's room where she started the fire. Osha arrives at the room and the two discuss what Mae did, which she now denies, telling Osha that Sol lied to her, to which Osha tells her that Sol never blamed Mae, and the reason that Osha failed to become a Jedi was that she couldn't free herself of the anger she felt at her sister. But she is taken aback by the revelation that Mae witnessed Sol killing her mother.
Sol encounters Qimir who dons his Cortosis helmet and ignites his lightsaber and the two fight, leaping from a bridge and continuing to battle as they slowly glide to the ground. Qimir splits his lightsaber into a second shorter blade, but Sol avoids the Cortosis and deactivating his blade, until he manages to destroy Qimir's lightsaber but only at the expense of dropping and damaging his own saber.
Mae enters and demands the truth of Sol, and he admits he killed her mother but he doesn't regret it, he only regrets not being able to help both of the twins. He tells her they aren't sisters, and aren't even twins, they were created using the force to split one soul, and are the same person.
Osha overhears and picks up Sol's lightsaber, she asks him if what he said is true, and he continues to explain what happened, but she tells him to shut up and force chokes him unleashing her anger. In her hand we see the damaged crystal within Sol's lightsaber become tinged with Red. Qimir reaches out for Osha, but she ignite the lightsaber and the blade turns from blue to red as she holds it at his throat.
Overhead the Jedi ship arrives and Qimir disappears once more, and Mae and Osha flee the fortress using the same path that Mae used years before, arriving later at the tree in the forest where Osha once used to go as a child.
As the Jedi leave their ship, the moment Master Rwoh steps onto the planet she senses a presence which she recognises saying only "You!". Qimir senses her presence as well and don's his helmet hiding his presence. As the Jedi move towards the temple, Bazil approaches them.
Qimir arrives at the tree and tells the twins that he can get one of them away with him, and Mae tells Osha that it is her choice. Osha decides that she wants to learn to punish the Jedi. Mae agrees to stay behind, but Qimir says they will get information from her mind, so he wipes her memories using the force.
The Jedi arrive at the Fortress and find Sol's body, and after ordering the others to search, Rwoh approaches his body, kneeling next to it and gently kissing his cheek before apologising for what must be done.
Later, back on Coruscant, Rwoh speaks with Mae who cannot remember anything after the night of the massacre. Rwoh explains that it was all done by a Jedi who is now dead, and she will help Mae find her sister with her help.
She then attends a meeting with the Supreme Chancellor, explaining that a rogue Jedi caused the deaths, and is now dead so the matter closed. But Senator Rayencourt pushes for an investigation into the Jedi.
Arriving at their hidden base, Osha looks out to sea and is joined by Qimir who holds her hand as she holds the lightsaber in hers.
Finally, Rwoh enters a chamber where we see the back of Yoda's head, and she apologises for disturbing him . . . .

High Points : A few outstanding moments of action which need to be commented on, firstly the chase through the rings of Brendock look fantastic, and secondly the fight between Qimir and Sol is amazing, including elements of Wirework making some of it look like the sword fights in eastern cinema such as Crouching TIger Hidden Dragon. Spectacular.
I really like the way they've build the character of Master Rwoh, she seemed as if she had ulterior motives, leading to some thinking she was the villain behind everything. But now it looks as if she is actually a straight up Jedi, and she was acting slightly oddly as she was suspicious of what had actually occurred on Brendock. I also like the way that she throws Sol to the wolves to protect the Jedi order, when he lied about what happened on Brendock, only for her to be committing the same sin as she now lies about what happened on Brendock.

Low Points : The series wants us to empathise with Osha, she's turned to the dark side because of the Jedi murder of her mother. But I have to repeat that the death of her mother was partly her own fault, talking about the twins being involved in a ceremony involving sacrifice and then turning yourself and one of the twins into black smoke, just looks really sus. It's the equivalent of talking about shooting someone, and then reaching into your coat in front of an armed cop (I'm thinking of the end of Falling Down here). It's kinda asking to get murdered.
But it seemed on the edge of doing something interesting, when Osha tells Mae that Sol never blamed Mae for what happened, I though she was going to reveal he'd told her the truth long before, and the story was going to go in a totally different direction rather than the simplistic, she's turning to the Dark Side that they've gone with.
And finally, I really think that they spent too much time in this episode setting up next season. Introducing Senator Rayencourt, building up Rwoh as a main character, etc. There's a lot going on in this episode, with not much pay off. We've got Yoda and Plagueis making cameos, we've got the Jedi being investigated, we've got Mae's memory being wiped. It's all set up for future story, and no real pay off for the existing one. The only pay off we get is to the title really, as we now know that Osha is the Acolyte. But didn't we think that about 3 episodes ago?

So what do you really think ? : The main draw of this season has been Sol, he's been a very Qui-gon like character, and very very watchable. But with his death, there's a hole in the show, and I really don't think that Osha or Mae is going to fill it. Perhaps Qimir, perhaps Rwoh, but they've made a feature of killing off the most interesting characters throughout, with Jecki and Yord showing signs of being really great characters as well.
I have problems working out what the arc of this season actually was, was it about Mae getting revenge on the Jedi which killed her mother, as now they're all dead her mission is complete (although it was actually Osha that completed it, and killed a Jedi without using a weapon, so truly completed it to the letter of what Mae was told to do). Was it about Qimir getting an Acolyte, which he now has in the form of Rwoh? Was it about the truth of what happened on Brendock coming out? (Although I'm not convinced that it has, since there were no bodies on the floor where the witches died when they return to it in this episode. And we know that this world has no animals to drag off and eat the bodies, so unless Mae returned and buried them all at some point.)

Final Words : So the controversy about this series turns out to be nothing, it started off really interesting, but got more and more conventional and therefore more dull as it went on. I'd definitely still watch another season of it, but it's been disappointing in where it went. And I find that I was more interested by the bits which other people complained about, rather than where the show really went with conventional wisdom of how a Star Wars show should be.

Score : 8/10

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