SPOILERS ARE HIDING BEHIND THE TREE
If it wasn’t obvious by now, I just want to make it totally plain: I absolutely love The Acolyte.
I love stories that reveal character as much as plot. Each episode of The Acolyte has reframed the previous episode or episodes, giving us a broader and deeper perspective on everything that’s come before.
It’s an approach to storytelling that has risks, especially in the culture-grinder that is our current media landscape. The Acolyte has as cumulative effect. No single episode is a completed thought on its own. “Destiny’ is a great episode of television but feels, in the telling, like it’s purposefully holding back, keeping its Tarot Cards close to its chest. It’s not until “Choice,” the seventh episode, that we truly understand “Destiny.” These episodes need one another to be fully understood.
Like Osha and Mae.
It’s revealed that Mae and Osha are more than twins: they’re one soul split in two. A combination of the Force/the Thread, the power of the Twin Moons that the witches employ, and some kind of mysterious vergence centered around Brendok, that filled it with life even after a Hyperspace disaster (double points for referencing The Phantom Menace and The High Republic in one line, writers!), resulted in their unique birth. Are they a Dyad like Rey and Kylo, or some kind of early version of the Chosen One prophecy (the Chosen Two), or something else? A precursor to the Rule of Two that will soon become integral to the reemergence of the Sith in the galaxy? Whatever’s going on, it’s rich new lore, and it gives clarity to their rhyme: “You're with me, I'm with you. Always one, but born as two. As above sits the stars. And below lies the sea. I give you, you. And you give me, me.”
And yes, after six episodes of Sol’s increasingly erratic behavior, of watching him be just-on-the-precipice of unburdening himself, six episodes of consequences for actions we have yet to fully understand, “Choice” shares the secret, the twist.
And what is this twist?
Human Frailty.
People, it turns out, make mistakes. Even Jedi. They have impure motivations, sometimes obscured by, or hidden within, noble intentions. Misunderstandings escalate, lead to conflict, and in a world of laser swords and Force-wielders, conflicts can be tragic.
It turns out four Jedi were on a mission to Brendok to study this vergence when Sol happened upon a community of women that had just two children. He spied on this community and came to dubious conclusions: that the children were in danger, that they were not being treated properly, that something was wrong.
Master Indara doesn’t immediately accept this interpretation. In fact, she sees him as myopic and naive, overeager to complete what he views as an important mission. And, after first encounter with the Witches goes awry (and scares the hell out of young Torbin, who just wants to go back home and end his miserable mission on Brendok), they still test the girls.
Now we see how those tests really went: Mae was not aggressive, just eager to get back to her Mothers, and she says the word ‘sacrifice’ in reference to the upcoming ceremony of Ascension - something that raises the Jedi’s eyebrows. And when Osha comes in, Sol does exactly what we saw him do in “Destiny,” but this time we see Torbin and Indara’s responses. They think he’s coaching her to give the right answers, which is exactly what he’s doing. He feels a connection to her in a way he doesn’t Mae, and right or wrong, it’s pushing him to try to bring her back to the Jedi Order with him. (Did I mention he doesn’t have a Padawan of his own because he’s not, perhaps, a great teacher?)
Finally, confirmation bias kicks in. Sol tells the group thinks the girls could be the vergence they’ve been looking for, and that’s all Torbin needs to hear. They could be his ticket out of the forest, and he jumps on a speeder to the Coven. Sol joins him, first in pursuit, but then in partnership. And Indara and poor Kelnacca wind up following them in their ship, just in case this gets any worse.
The witches, for their part, have their own misunderstandings and disagreements that drive the action forward. Mother Koril wants to fight to keep her children. Mother Aniseya believes that Osha’s choice must be respected. When confronted with the decision to be a leader to the Coven or a mother to the girls, she says “I choose Mother!” Koril does too, in fact. She just sees motherhood as protecting the girls from the Jedi.
The beauty of “Choice,” is that every single character takes regrettable action based on an entirely defensible, and internally consistent, belief. Those beliefs are often based on what they want to see, what they don’t know, or some small true thing that is ultimately misleading.
And so, the whole encounter is a mess. At times, it’s even a glorious mess. I gasped when Mother Aniseya turned into a wisp of smoke, only to have that same cloud stabbed by Sol, would-be Jedi Protector. I cheered to see Kelnacca have a brutal, entertaining lightsaber duel with his comrades due to the collective coven mind trick. But it was also just so sad to watch him put through that, permanently scarring a fellow Jedi, especially knowing his fate. After Sol kills Aniseya, in plain view of Mae, he looks absolutely gutted. He tries in vain to hold off Mother Koril’s attacks without igniting his lightsaber, refusing to fight, knowing he’s done something he can never undo.
Mae also makes a tragic mistake. She burns her sister’s book - but we see now that she didn’t mean to burn her whole house down. And we see that the lockdown is not Mae’s fault entirely. Koril tells her to “get mad” and fight for her sister. Mae, with her Mother’s approval, destroys the controls so that no one can get in or out, in an attempt to fortify their defense against the Jedi. As the fire spreads, igniting the (yes folks) flammable material one might find in an abandoned mining facility, everything spins out of control. Explosions and fire spread, a fight ensues, and we know the rest. Massive loss of life, a terrible choice (Sol literally drops Mae to save Osha, deciding between which he can save), and finally, the cover-up.
One of the best aspects of this fantastic episode is the reason for this cover-up. It’s not to protect Sol, who immediately wants to offer his explanation to the Council; or to protect the reputation of the Jedi Order(so often the reason for Jedi caginess).
No, it’s to protect Osha.
Indara, played with serene grit by Carrie Ann-Moss, insists that the Jedi protect Osha’s dream by not telling her the entire truth. She knows that if Osha is told that Sol killed her mother, and the whole event was an escalating disaster, she’ll lose the only family she hopes to have left. So she invents a story to protect the spirit of the girl who lived.
Isn’t this really why we make mistakes? Because the choices before us aren’t plain or easy to unravel. Hiding the truth of what happened is terrible… but telling the truth might be worse. Caught betweent two terrible choices, the Jedi simply make one, and the consequences of that choice reverberate all the way to their despair and doom.
This is how things so often go wrong. Yes there are clear villains in this world, but not everyone is Vladimir Putin. Many of us just do our best and don’t always get it right. There are overworked nurses in hospitals run by for-profit companies that accidentally prescribe the wrong dosage of medication and have to live with themselves when something goes wrong. There are soldiers given orders to use drones, who are given impossible, life or death choices to make with to no little information. A rural woman, out of work, may think that her local politician has failed to protect her job, so she votes for the other party, which proceeds to cut off her access to public assistance. Someone may be creating the next generation of AI, and see themselves as developing tools that will make the world better, only to see that same technology put hundreds of people out of work. In short, lots of good people do things they wish they could take back. People do their best, but no one gets through life without regrets.
The Acolyte, it turns out, isn’t about evil per se, but error. None of the Jedi are villainous. No one turns to the Dark Side, there’s no malice, no evil. None of the witches are monsters, they’re just trying to figure out what to do and hold on to their children. And the girls were navigating the choices of others, caught in the middle.
Into this morass, this swirl of imperfection, comes a truly malevolent force to take advantage of the resulting emotional damage. We’ll see how all these mistakes come together and unravel when Mae, armed with the truth, finds Osha, wrapped in lies; and Sol faces seductive and dangerous The Stranger, one more time.
it's fun playing the blame game. a friend of mine thinks that Sol is most at fault, while i see Torbin going all Leeroy Jenkins as the most significant mistake.
it's also interesting rewatching e3 and e7 back to back. some of the differences between what a certain character sees and hears are subtle. for example, a handful of Mother Koril's words being left out in e7 make her seem abusive, while she was portrayed as a stern, but still caring, mom in e3. with most modern television being so ham-fisted, i'm guessing that subtle changes are lost on part of the audience.
Also? 100% more songs than Andor.