The Acolyte: A Return To Star Wars’ Greatness

The Acolyte is Disney’s newest foray into exploring the galaxy far far away. While the Mouse has had highs (Andor, The Mandalorian), they also have produced the lowest of lows in The Rise of Skywalker. It takes talent to make “I hate sand” look like poetry, but “somehow, Palpatine returned” did just that.

However, The Acolyte hit the ground stumbling. Or, did it? Despite review-bombing giving the series terrible reviews, critics praised it. Writer Robert Evans even stated:

I finally sat down and watched The Acolyte all the way through and I was blown away. Andor is a better piece of art. But The Acolyte is the best Star Wars to come out since the original trilogy. I really don’t see what more fans of the series could want.

We’re inclined to agree with Evans’ assessment. The Acolyte is a love letter to Star Wars, a child honoring their parents while also making their own mark on the world.

What makes The Acolyte so successful as a Star Wars story? Be warned, below there be spoilers.

 

Jedi Twin, Sith Twin

The Acolyte’s story follows two main characters: Osha and Mae. Osha dropped out of Jedi training; Mae trains under a Sith Master. On the surface, this creates a clear “good twin, bad twin” dichotomy. Yet the series deconstructs this to the benefit of both characters.

Even when, in the end, the characters are revealed to be one person split into two with the Force, it’s clear that this is just semantics. Mae and Osha (Amandla Stenberg) are two different people, and the story is about them uncovering who they are and how they fit in the Force. Just like a young boy who grew up on Tatooine.

Other major characters, particularly Sol (Lee Jaejung of Squid Game) and Qimir (Manny Jacinto of The Good Place) provide their own compelling arcs. Sol is a gentle-hearted, well-intentioned Jedi who ultimately did the most harm to the twins. Qimir is a Sith who wields cool dual lightsabers and also encourages free thinking.

 

Lights, Camera, Lightsabers!

The Acolyte sets itself about one hundred years before the prequel trilogy. Already, this sets it apart from other Disney spin-offs: cameos aren’t popping up here there and everywhere. There’s little pandering to nostalgia.

Well, mostly. One character only mentioned in the prequel trilogy cameos. Some fans criticized the character’s appearance for being incongruent with Star Wars lore, which is a fair critique. However, Star Wars lore has always been vibes at best (anyone remember when C-3PO was suddenly created by Anakin? Midochlorians?)

Yet despite not pandering to nostalgia, the series invokes it all the same. It throws epic lightsaber fights alongside fantastical new worlds. It gives us similar archetypes in characters yet spins them in a whole new direction. In the end, it makes one want to rewatch Star Wars as a saga rather than requiring it as a chore to understand what’s going on.

Thanks to not relying on nostalgia to sell itself, the story manages to avoid being boxed in. It explores prescient real-life issues in a way that’s reminiscent of the Original Trilogy’s subtle commentary on the Vietnam War. In an increasingly polarized world, The Acolyte tackles extremism of both religious and political persuasions, the limits and strengths of love, and it does all of this while maintaining a whimsical, fun tone.

Hence, The Acolyte manages to maintain the best tone and themes of each Star Wars trilogy.

 

The Acolyte and the Original Trilogy

What prompted Robert Evans to compare The Acolyte to the Original Trilogy in quality? Is it a fair comparison?

Well, The Acolyte cleverly takes several of the tropes of the Original Trilogy and reinvents them. Long lost twin siblings. A small life mechanic called to a greater purpose (Osha). Love igniting the best in people. After all, George Lucas himself once stated:

be compassionate and love people… that’s basically all Star Wars is.”

Love centers the twins’ bond, pulling Mae back from the brink and preventing her from turning fully Sith, much like Darth Vader.

Yet The Acolyte goes beyond structural and even thematic comparisons. It captures the same whimsical, fun adventure tone of the Original Trilogy. Our characters chase Mae across a variety of planets and worlds. Familiar worlds like the Wookie planet Khofar enchant viewers, as do new, unique worlds like the witches of Brendok.

 

The Acolyte and the Prequel Trilogy

The Acolyte takes the intriguing questions and political themes of the Prequel Trilogy and explores them with greater depth and less clunky dialogue. Here, we witness a once-promising Jedi fall to the Sith like Anakin. However, while her fall is brought about by her attachments, the attachments themselves are not condemned.

The Prequel Trilogy introduced some major problems with the Jedi. The idea that attachments lead to corruption was criticized, as fans of the Original Trilogy knew that a father-son attachment was ultimately why Palpatine was defeated and Luke and the galaxy were saved.

The Acolyte continues to develop this idea, not just with Mae as mentioned above, but with Osha. Osha’s denial of her love for her Dark Side sister lays the groundwork for her own fall from grace. In fact, the series highlights mentor Sol’s own attachment to Osha as something both genuine in love and yet toxic.

The focus on rules and ideals over the lived reality of many Jedi certainly helped push Anakin to the brink. Anakin’s upbringing of slavery had more than a few parallels with his strict Jedi training, after all. Not to mention his love for Padmé having to be kept secret, so he’s forced to bear his anxieties on his own.

Sol’s care for Osha serves to both show why the Jedi would come up with such a rule, as it certainly led to him doing the wrong thing in essentially kidnapping Osha from her family because he thought he could raise her better. Yet it also doesn’t portray Sol’s love for her as fake or self-aggrandizing.

When Osha kills Sol, her father figure, he looks at her with love.

 

The Acolyte and the Sequel Trilogy

The Acolyte reflects the best aspects of the Sequel Trilogy and redeems its many flaws by plucking the ideas from the quagmire and actually doing something with them. It does this both on a contextual level and a story level.

On a contextual level, the story is cognizant of its place in Star Wars lore, and with the fatigue in fandom. Yet it unabashedly casts people to color to play all the major roles (Amandla Stenberg, Manny Jacinto, and Lee Jungjae). Predictably, this drove most of the online review bombing.

However, unlike the Sequel Trilogy, it did not ultimately cave and cater to nostalgia-obsessed fans at the expense of its story.

Beyond the obvious of making the main characters Black women, it develops Mae and Osha’s unique desires and powers in ways the Sequel Trilogy never did with Rey or Rose. The story behind how the Jedi become convinced that they’re doing the right thing by taking Osha and Mae away certainly contains real-life subtext that makes the characters being played by a Black woman seem like a prudent and purposeful choice. Something that the Sequel Trilogy notably did not do.

 

The Acolyte Reworks The Sequel Trilogy’s Potential 

On a story level, The Acolyte addresses many ideas of the Sequel Trilogy.

Abducted children brainwashed into serving a power greater than themselves, as could have been Finn’s story, is a central conflict for Osha. The difference, of course, is that her abductors are the “good guys,” the Jedi, instead of Stormtroopers. This inversion not only connects Finn’s story to Anakin’s, but subverts expectations in a satisfying way that doesn’t demonize anything that came before.

Mae’s story focuses on the trauma of abandonment and grief, something introduced as a fascinating psychological challenge for Rey in The Last Jedi only to vanish in The Rise of Skywalker. The story asks what happens if Rey was found not by Han Solo, but by a Sith, making Mae’s dalliance with the Dark Side far more powerful than one two-second vision in The Rise of Skywalker.

Lastly, The Acolyte takes the Light and Dark Side pairing that proved popular in the Sequel Trilogy and creates meaning from it. Rey and Kylo Ren got their kiss but little else in terms of psychological exploration or thematic impact. Osha and Qimir, on the other hand, have their budding relationship as one of the central forces of the story.

The Acolyte makes Qimir and Osha mirrors of one another. Qimir, too, was once a Jedi youngling. Qimir’s role isn’t manipulation but instead encouraging Osha to think for herself. Osha has a distinctly Kylo Ren moment of killing her father figure. Their attachment to one another seems equally likely to save each other or destroy each other.

As viewers have already seen Mae and Osha waffle between Dark and Light, pulled to both by love, there’s potential for some very interesting future storytelling. After all, isn’t that where most humans live—in the between?

 

The Future

The Acolyte may or may not get a second season. The story itself promises room for one. Given the commercial and critical success (even if not in online review forums), it seems logical to greenlight another season. However, as of late, cancellations and renewals don’t seem to be based on logic, so who knows.

That is not to say the series doesn’t have its flaws. Two flashback episodes create very wonky pacing. Osha’s arc, through the beginning, is more told than shown (though it’s worth noting that this fits with Osha’s upbringing of obeying what she’s told rather than thinking and acting on her own; Mae’s arc never suffers from this).

Still, The Acolyte is a rare gem in 2024. It takes the best elements and most interesting parts of a beloved franchise and manages to braid them into a fresh story that commits, first and foremost, to telling its story. This way, The Acolyte can satisfy many Star Wars diehards as well as draw in new fans. Disney would be foolish not to give showrunner Leslye Headland the green light.