TV Show Review: The Acolyte - Season 1

Stars: 1 out of 5

Pros: Lightsaber battles are cool

Cons: The writing makes no sense

The Bottom Line:

Disastrous show

Missing good story telling

Avoid at all costs

Yes, It Really Is That Bad

I haven’t been a big fan of most of the Star Wars series on Disney+, but I decided to go ahead and watch The Acolyte.  Mainly, it was because it was on in the summer, and I don’t have much else to watch at the moment.  It quickly became apparent that it was bad, but I kept watching it anyway.

If you’ve heard all the controversy surrounding it, let me confirm, yes, it is as bad as you have heard.  For the record, I watched all eight episodes.  This is based completely on what we got in season one.  Not what I read elsewhere.  Not that I think after the first five minutes.  I watched the entire first season.

The story is set roughly 100 years before the prequels and revolves around Osha (Amandla Stenberg), a mechanic on the farthest reaches of space.  She gets into trouble when someone who looks exactly like her kills a Jedi master across the galaxy.  Despite the fact that she wasn’t anywhere near the murder, the Jedi bring her in to face the consequences.  Of course, it turns out that it wasn’t her, but her identical twin sister Mae (also Amandla Stenberg).  And it all ties into what happened to Osha and Mae when they were kids sixteen years ago.

And in case you are worried I just spoiled a big plot twist, rest assured.  What I just teased all is explained in the first episode.

Yes, that’s part of the problem.  The show sets itself up as a mystery.  But it reveals too much of the big twists early on.  If we’d spent episodes watching Osha jump from planet to planet before learning that Mae was behind things, it would have worked.  Instead, we get that pesky detail out of the way early on.

Then, in episode three, we get a flashback to what happened sixteen years ago.  So even the mystery of the past is given away early.  Well, most of it.  Episode seven gives us another perspective on what happened sixteen years ago and has a few revelations in it.  But not enough to justify its forty-minute run time.  We could have seen those five minutes of new information as a flashback in another episode as one character confesses to another what happened from their perspective.

The idea behind the show was apparently to introduce some gray into the world of Star Wars, which has always said the Jedi are good and the Sith are bad.  Honestly, I’m of two minds about this.  I love seeing something as more complex than we originally were told.  And, any organization is going to get corrupted, especially as it grows bureaucratic.  However, do we need that in Star Wars?  Couldn’t we have a new story/universe/creation of some kind where that happened?  Either way, this show wasn’t the show to do it.  What drives everything?  A misunderstanding.  Yes, the result is tragic, but what we see happen isn’t truly evil.  In fact, what happened is understandable given what the characters knew and didn’t know.  So the premise itself, Jedi are evil, doesn’t work.  To pull off something like this, we would need to see something truly evil done by the Jedi.  Instead, we see the Sith taking revenge for something they don’t fully understand, and going above and beyond the true call for justice.  In other words, they are still pure evil.

This is a plot driven show.  What do I mean by that?  The characters will say and do anything needed to move the plot forward even if it contradicts what they said two minutes ago.  This is a real conversation that was had in an episode.

Leader: I don’t think we should all go in because it will be seen as a threat.

Subordinate: I think it will be better if we all go in together.

Leader: Okay.

Seriously?  That’s the best you can come up with?  Characters change their motivation from moment to moment as well, based on what best works for the story at that particular time.  Nothing shows this better than the final few moments that left me scratching my head.  How does any of that flow from what we’ve seen before?  Oh wait, it doesn’t matter.  It’s all about getting to the ending the creator wanted to get to.  Never mind if it makes any sense.  And there was such an easy way to not have that ending that anyone could have seen.  I certainly did.

The episodes range from a little over 30 minutes to just under 50 minutes.  Even then, this should have been a movie instead of a show.  There is that little story to tell.  I mean, one episode spends a lot of time with characters walking through woods talking.

Not to mention we get suspense from the infamous “I have something important to tell you later” or the dramatic screen cut.

And let’s not forget characters that have awesome powers in one episode lose them by the next episode.  Or even five minutes later.  And the stone fortress that catches fire.

Mind you, I’ll gladly go along with almost anything when I’m reading or watching something.  So if I’m nitpicking the show this much, you know it has that many issues.

I’m not enough of a Star Wars fan that I would have caught the timeline issues if they hadn’t been blown up all over social media.  So I’ll just note that the Sith should have been extinct at this point according to The Phantom Menace among other inconsistencies with the established lore.  And no, that plot hole is never addressed, at least here.

I also found the moral of the story to be very ironic coming from the left leaning people who created the series.  The entire thing could have been avoided if Osha’s mothers were just willing to let her go and be trained as a Jedi (which we learn in episode 3).  Something Osha wants.  But that’s not what her mothers want, which leads to the misunderstandings.  And we are supposed to think the Jedi are bad for pushing for it and encouraging Osha.  Yet today, we have the government in the US, mostly left leaning people, who are saying that parents shouldn’t have any rights over their kids, and kids know what is best for them when they are really too young to know any better.  In other words, the exact opposite of what this show demonstrates. 

And yes, you read that right, Osha and Mae have two mothers.  Honestly, the “woke” elements are the least of this show’s issues.  Although the show’s attempts to insert pronouns into an episode give us a hilariously poorly written 5 seconds.  If only that were the only example of poor writing in the show.  There’s one scene I am impressed the ensemble was able to get through without cracking up.  Or cringing.

There are a couple of stand outs in the cast who do the best they have with the material they are given.  The rest of the cast is adequate at best.  Although I am wondering if one of the performances was done the way it was on purpose given what we learn near the end.  Even so, it was still hard to watch and was bad acting overall.

I will give the show this – the lightsaber battles are epic.  Go on a little too long at times and filmed so that they are hidden at other times.  But when we get a good action scene, they are fun to watch.  Sadly, there aren’t nearly enough of them to justify watching the show.

If you haven’t watched The Acolyte yet, don’t waste your time.  If you’ve started, no it doesn’t get any better.  This show was a waste of time and money.  The ending of season one sets things up for another season.  If we are given more, I won’t be back to watch it.