The first episode of the new Star Wars offering, The Acolyte, didn’t really do it for me, as I explained in a recent post. I wasn’t the only one not impressed. At the time of writing, there are thousands of one-star reviews for the series, with an overall rating of 1.2. Ouch.
I looked at those reviews the other day, when I’d caught up to the latest episode (7) and I have to say, I don’t agree.
Quite a few of the one-star reviews lamented the lack of action and light sabre duels. And I guess that’s the great divide for Star Wars fans. Some love non-stop action with lots of fights as in Ahsoka, others want a bit more substance to the stories. Light sabres are produced quite a few times but this story is more about character and the unravelling of a mystery. In fact, just the kind of thing I like. Who are the witches who produced Osha and Mae, the force-gifted twins? Who was their father – important in a group of all females.
In the first episodes, three of the Jedi who were present when Osha was taken away to be a Jedi are murdered. We learn that the perpetrator is Mae, one of the twins. She was thought to have died in the conflagration that utterly destroyed her family. But someone has trained her, a master whose face she has never seen. Of the four Jedi present at those events sixteen years ago, the only survivor is Sol, played by Lee Jung-Jae. He is clearly a target.
As the episodes progress, Sol is revealed as a man as much tortured by the past as Osha and Mae. The question arises; what really happened all those years ago? Sol is wracked with guilt trying desperately to correct a wrong.
As I mentioned in my reading of the first episode, the Jedi as an organisation come across as arrogant, definitely seeing themselves as superior to everybody else. The Jedi Council is like many other bureaucracies — careful to cover up any errors for the good of the organisation. And the Jedi are shown to be flawed, not at all invincible.
I think this series is much better than Ahsoka. I can actually see myself watching the episodes again.
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