Star Wars: The Acolyte Ep 5 Review
The above gif might feel like an exaggeration, but it isn’t. After four episodes that ranged from tolerable to flat-out cringe, The Acolyte starts to get Star Wars right. And the secret? The lightsaber duel gets done right.
Thanks to growing up with the prequels, my generation’s standards for a lightsaber duel in Star Wars are very high. That’s one of the reasons why I’m not a fan of the Sequels: the lightsaber duels weren’t good. The Acolyte, on the other hand? I don’t know who did the fight choreography for this episode, but they must know what they’re doing. This episode mainly consisted of fighting, and while it doesn’t reach the heights of Duel of the Fates, it’s still pretty good! Alas, for the Jedi, it’s also a moment of great humiliation for them as The Master piles up bodies.
And guess who’s underneath that mask?
This Lightsaber Duel Turned into an Execution
After the poorly timed cliffhanger to last week’s episode, the series shows us how we got robbed of something truly awesome. Eight Jedi are standing off against the Master, and he swats everyone aside like they’re nothing. Given how they’re outnumbered 8 to 1, you’d think the Jedi at least had a chance.
This clip sums up what happens to those Jedi.
What follows is a massacre. In one of the best lightsaber duels since the era of the Prequel films, the Master proceeds to slaughter almost every Jedi present. No one is safe from his rampage. Even the named characters find their plot armor useless, with Jecki getting triple-impaled by his lightsaber and Yord getting his neck snapped!
And as a bonus, it turns out his helmet and gauntlets are made from cortosis, a rare mineral that, when refined, can not only block blaster bolts and lightsabers but can even short the latter out. It’s not as prominent as beskar armor these days, but in the pre-Disney EU, it was a normal person’s go-to resource for creating weapons and armor that could stand up to a Jedi or Sith. The fact that this man has it shows he’s not taking any chances with the Jedi.
This entire fight is nothing compared to what we got in the Prequels. None of the lightsaber duels under Disney have gotten that close. However, this was amazing compared to what we’ve gotten since the Sequels. When was the last time you saw someone take on eight Jedi and make victims out of almost all of them? Only a powerful Sith could hope to do that!
Is This Guy a Sith?
Eventually, Sol does manage to unmask the Master. And like many fans speculated, it was none other than Mae’s so-called friend, Qimir. How people will take this will remain up for debate. On the one hand, it’s yet another example of how easy it is for the Sith to hide under the Jedi’s nose in these past thousand years. On the other hand, people will complain that it was too obvious a decision to make Qimir a Sith.
The idea that Qimir might be a Sith Lord creates a massive plot hole in the franchise. The Jedi aren’t supposed to realize the Sith still exists until Sidious and Maul choose to reveal themselves. Having Qimir out himself as one would throw the Jedi into full-blown panic mode. However, I can already see three ways that The Acolyte will pull this off.
Firstly, it’s still unconfirmed that Qimir is a Sith Lord. He says that that is what the Jedi would call him, but he doesn’t say that that is what he considers himself to be. For all we know, Qimir could simply be messing with the Jedi; he’s a troll. It makes sense.
Secondly, he could consider himself a Sith, but he has no connection to Darth Bane’s Sith Order or the Rule of Two. I doubt they would even consider someone like Qimir who would be willing to risk their centuries-old plan to conquer the Republic from within like he is. For all we know, Qimir may not even know that the real Sith is still out there.
Thirdly, and this is the darkest scenario, the Jedi won’t know about the Sith’s continued existence because Qimir kills everyone involved. Or just as bad, he turns one of them into his new acolyte.
And that person might not even be Mae.
I Don’t Know What Mae is Thinking!
Mae might be my least favorite character in The Acolyte, and there’s good reason to see her as a bad character. She shows up and kills a Jedi while using a line that sounds incredibly corny. She blames the four Jedi on Brendok for wiping out her coven and killing her sister. And while we still don’t know if that’s true (it might be!), that doesn’t change the fact that she started a fire to try and kill her sister to keep her from joining the Jedi. Then, in the last episode, she decides to turn herself into the Jedi after learning her sister is alive! And now she’s flip-flopping again!
In the aftermath of the massacre, Mae and Osha finally get a moment to speak for the first time in years, and what does Mae do? She says the Jedi invaded their home, kidnapped Osha, and brainwashed her. She still doesn’t accept that everything Osha did was of her own free will!
I still don’t know if Sol and the others did end up screwing up on Brendok like Mae claims, but even if they did, that’s not going to give Mae the moral high ground. She thinks that because they’re twins, she’s entitled to make Osha stay with her. It gets to the point that I’d call her delusional, but not even that’s enough to spare her sister. After knocking her out, she cuts her hair and swaps their clothes before fleeing with Sol. She pulls off the evil-twin switcheroo and expects it to work!
To be fair, Sol is in no shape, physically or mentally, to realize the swap. But once he does, Mae’s plans will fall apart. Even worse, though? Osha is now stuck with Qimir, and I don’t think he plans to kill her.
If You Won’t Turn, Perhaps She Will
In the duality that Mae and Osha represent, Osha is supposed to be the light to Mae’s darkness. However, Qimir will likely end up changing that. Having failed to gain an apprentice in Mae, he might attempt to corrupt Osha instead. Some might see that as impossible, but consider this: Sol is hiding something. When Qimir hints at knowing the full story of what happened at Brendok, and Osha asks Sol about it, he’s noticeably mysterious. He’s hiding something that Qimir will have no such compunction to do. And if Qimir tells Osha the whole story (or part of it), it could end up breaking Osha’s respect for the Jedi. And with that, Qimir has his prized acolyte.
Conversely, Sol could tell Mae the whole story of what happened to Brendok. That will make her realize how misguided her anger is, and cause her to switch sides. Won’t change what she’s done, but still.
Bad writing aside that doesn’t change the fact that this was the best episode of The Acolyte to date. We finally got an excellent lightsaber duel! If the show focused more on the combat than the dialogue, fans wouldn’t be so critical about it! If the latter half of the series is more like this, then The Acolyte might salvage itself. Sometimes you have to crawl through the filth to make it out clean, and I’m hoping The Acolyte can do just that.
If it doesn’t, we still have the other shows.
Also, feel free to look up cortosis. It’s a pretty useful mineral!
