The Acolyte (No Spoilers)

I've been really slack in terms of writing about new Star Wars media in recent months... I watched both the final season of Bad Batch and Tales of the Empire when they came out, but while I enjoyed both, I found myself surprisingly lacking in interesting things to say about either. Not so with The Acolyte!

In the months before this show's release, I saw some curious comments about it around my corner of the fandom along the lines of "if you liked Andor, you'll like this too". This both caught my attention and immediately made me extremely sceptical... because I adored Andor, and comparing anything new to that show was setting yourself a really high bar. Not to mention that I thought a big part of Andor's charm was that it didn't need the Force and lightsabers to be interesting, so I couldn't see how a classic Jedi story could compete with that anyway. As a result, I ultimately didn't take those comments too seriously, though I tried to think of them with consideration for what I assumed was the intended sentiment behind them: to imply that The Acolyte was going to try and be different from previous Star Wars shows, which I figured could end up being commendable in its own way.

Why do I start with this? Because after having seen the last episode today, I can say with 100% certainty that this show is definitely not like Andor, but also, it did live up to the promise of trying something different, and for that I really liked it. In fact, this may well end up being my second favourite Star Wars live action show to date (though I wouldn't fault anyone for feeling differently)!

Set in the High Republic era, it immediately puts us in a context where there are no Skywalkers or Emperors or any of that baggage. I haven't read any of the High Republic books, but as a SWTOR fan, the pictured shenanigans surrounding the Jedi order didn't seem that dissimilar from the Old Republic to be honest. At this point, I like the idea of Jedi and Sith as groups of people more than as singular heroes with superpowers. When you have lots of Jedi, they don't all have to be amazing at everything; you can have some that are a bit dorky, or more bookish or what have you. Different personalities instead of just "the good guy" and "the bad guy".

And in that regard, the show immediately worked for me. I was interested in the characters right away, and some amazing acting really helped. Lee Jung-jae, who portrays Master Sol, acted his damn heart out in every single episode. I read somewhere that he actually had to learn English for the role, which you know... you might think that would be a handicap and not necessarily make him ideal for the role to start with, but damn, he was absolutely perfect in it. If anything, I think the show suffered a little from narrowing down the cast in the later episodes because more could have been done with some of these characters in my opinion.

The plot was also interesting - in Disney+ the show is tagged as "Mystery" and there is definitely some of that. More than anything though, I appreciated that it gave us what's probably the most nuanced portrayal of Jedi and Sith that we've seen in live action yet. The Jedi have good intentions, but they're also just people doing people things: they feel worry, lie to hide things that they think will harm others, get bored, argue, act rashly and make a lot of what turn out to be bad decisions. And the main Sith we see is a hardened killer, but also not without reason or incapable of expressing sentiments other than hate or rage - definitely one of the better villains we've gotten in Star Wars.

Another thing I liked - and which it did have in common with Andor actually, even if wasn't on the same level - was that the show didn't hold the viewer by the hand at every step of the way. For me it was episode three where I first caught myself thinking "eh, that wasn't a very satisfying explanation for that event" and at first I found myself feeling a little disappointed... until I talked to other people who had seen the episode, who highlighted to me that there was at least one clue I had missed to show that this was supposed to be an unconvincing story, that we were only seeing one person's point of view and they were obviously missing something. After that I immediately started to be more attentive, and there were still things I missed that I needed others to explain to me, and that actually delighted me.

Oh, have I mentioned the fight scenes yet? I don't need massive action in my Star Wars, but if you're going to have lightsaber fights, you might as well make them good, and I think The Acolyte probably had some of the best live action choreography since The Phantom Menace. It's more Eastern martial arts inspired than usual, but it works really well, and there were quite a few fight scenes that actually made me go "whoa, cool" which is something I personally rarely feel when it comes to action sequences nowadays.

The show is not perfect, of course. The editing in some episodes struck me as slightly odd in terms of where scene changes were placed, and more than one episode ended with a cliffhanger that just felt annoying and unnecessary. While I've praised some of the actors, others were... struggling to live up to the ambition of their roles is how I'd put it I think. I might not even have noticed it in a worse show to be honest, but it was kind of noticeable when contrasted with the more outstanding performances in this one. And while I quite enjoyed the plot, the general writing and dialogue was mostly... kinda mid. I can think of a lot of moments that I thought were memorable, but very few lines that were. I can't fault anyone for being more bothered by these things than I was, but I just loved the characters, the setting and the overall story.

Without going into spoilers, the last episode ends with one character's arc coming to a neat conclusion, and another coming to what I'd call a temporary conclusion... but there are several obvious hooks for a second season. And I'd actually like to see one, which is quite a contrast to Ahsoka, where my reaction was pretty much that I would watch a second season, but that I also didn't really care whether there was going to be one or not. Unfortunately what publicly available numbers there are seem to indicate that The Acolyte hasn't been as much of a success as previous shows, so a continuation currently looks anything but guaranteed.