The Acolyte - Disney Plus Star Wars Series

[Duke Togo]

10 minutes ago, Big s said:

The only reason that for me it ranks slightly above the Obi show is that it’s not ruining a beloved character or characters. Just a bunch of crappy characters that I don’t care about in a show I don’t really care much about. 

Fandom: "Do something original!" "Must have characters I know!"

🙄

[kajnrig]

I guess this show updates on Tuesdays then? For some reason I was thinking Wednesdays. Maybe because of X-Men 97.

[jvmacross]

So in ROTS....Palpatine talks about Darth Plagueis' ability to 'create life'....wonder if that originates from these 'Force witches'....

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Seto Kaiba]

New episode just dropped... and the title's the overused word I loathe the most in all of Star Wars: "Destiny".

Looks like the writers were in a mood to get all that pesky exposition out of the way so Mae can get back to posing like an idiot and talking like an edgelord.

Spoiler

We're on Brendok this time... Mae and Osha's home world.  It's also a flashback to sixteen years ago.

I know this is an incredibly trivial nit to pick, but why does every character who appears in a flashback always have to have exactly the same haircut as a child that they do as an adult?  I don't know anyone who kept the same haircut for their entire life.

Spoiler

We get to see a young Osha apparently experimenting with the Force to play with a tiny alien critter that's either a terrible computer effect or a tacky fishing lure, I honestly cannot tell.  Mae shows up and reminds her that the tree she's playing under is poisonous... conveniently the very poison used to kill Master Torbin last episode.  It seems Mae has always been a bit of a psycho, as she apparently starts using the Force to torture that small animal before getting told off by her sister.  We also get to see them being stalked by a young Sol. 

We get to see the twins probably-doomed hometown on Brendok, and a bit about their family life before everything went pear-shaped.

Okay... yeah... starting to see how things went south here.

Osha and Mae were born into a coven of witches hiding out on Brendok to escape persecution.  Yeah... um... even if I hadn't seen enough of The Clone Wars to know that witches in Star Wars are dark side-using evil cultists in the hammy tradition of Hollywood Satanism.  And if we're supposed to think otherwise of this lot, the fact that the entire group dresses like stock evil cultist characters, that their leader gives a Dark is not Bad speech, and that they punctuate their creepy rituals with literally maniacal laughter (it's actually subtitled "laughs maniacally", I checked) then it is mission failed.  Mae swears her loyalty to her mother's creepy evil cult and gets some magic face painting, while Osha's induction ends up being interrupted by the Jedi that Mae will later want to murder.

Can I just say how unnatural a clothed Wookiee looks?  For real.  I guess I'm so used to seeing Chewbacca go around letting it all hang out that seeing a Wookie wearing more than just a bandolier and a smile just feels weird.

Spoiler

Master Indara seems to indicate that the religion of evil this coven follows is illegal in the Republic.

The witches accuse the Jedi of being there to steal their children, and Sol claims the Jedi do not take children.  I'd understood that was basically THE default recruitment method for Jedi... taking Force sensitive kids away from their families to train them.  Sol makes a recruitment pitch to Osha, who seems open to the idea of becoming a Jedi... having previously expressed her unwillingness to become a witch.  I'm not sure if it's intentional, but it looks like there's an Evil is Cold moment where the cast all suddenly start seeing their breath like the temperature dropped and then the witches attack Torbin right after Sol invites Osha to become a Jedi.

We get a scene where the witches inner circle meet, and it seems that some kind of proscribed ritual was used to create the twins... so apparently the "has two moms" bit mentioned earlier is doggedly literal just with magical intervention instead of medical.

I suppose it's a nice bit of continuity that we see the Jedi use the same testing methods here that they used on Anakin in The Phantom Menace.

Spoiler

Mae is definitely a little bit psycho... but I guess being raised in an evil cult that does maniacal laughter unironically will do that.  She straight up tells Osha she'll kill her so she can't leave.  She locks her in her room (why does it lock from the outside?) and then sets fire to Osha's little sketchbook AND THE BUILDING.

Do they not have fire extinguishers in this interstellar civilization?

Osha escapes by climbing into some kind of handy escape chute leads into a cave system that leads to some big machine that blows up for no adequately explored reason, then Mae informs Osha her mother is dead and they each demand to know what the other did.

Sol forgets he has superpowers and can levitate people with his mind.  Also, that is a LOT of corpses.  Sol has to drag Osha away from her mother's corpse, which goes a ways towards explaining why she had issues that prevented her from becoming a Jedi.

We get to see right at the end that Mae survived her apparently fatal fall, which is how she came to believe Osha is dead.

 

All in all, it's a backstory dump an entire episode long and yet it doesn't feel like it added anything substantial to the story.  

It confirmed Mae has always been at least a little bit of a psychopath and why Sol and the twins all believed one of them had died, but that's about it.  This is the TV episode version of the meeting that could've been an email.

 

 

23 minutes ago, kajnrig said:

I guess this show updates on Tuesdays then? For some reason I was thinking Wednesdays. Maybe because of X-Men 97.

Tuesdays at 9pm Eastern (6pm Pacific).

[Big s]

21 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Can I just say how unnatural a clothed Wookiee looks?

That wasn’t as jarring as it’s shaved head

 

22 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Do they not have fire extinguishers in this interstellar civilization?

They also don’t have walkway rails since OSHA hadn’t set her standards yet

[jvmacross]

20 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

 

  Hide contents

 

Do they not have fire extinguishers in this interstellar civilization?

 

 

 

Spoiler

...may as well add sperm banks to the list...which is kind of ironic since it is via 'natural' conception that 'Rey' (the most OP Force User of All Time) came to be rather than via all the fancy cloning and whatnot that Palpatine was busy with....and now apparently these 'Force...err...'Thread' Witches are up to the same shennanigans....when will these people understand that nothing good comes from creating life via the Force....lol

 

[Seto Kaiba]

1 hour ago, Big s said:

That wasn’t as jarring as it’s shaved head

I was so thrown by the fact that the Wookiee was wearing clothes that I completely missed that he also had a shaved head and a topknot.

 

1 hour ago, Big s said:

They also don’t have walkway rails since OSHA hadn’t set her standards yet

That part is normal for Star Wars. 

Bottomless pits without any kind of safety rails seems to be a galaxy-wide engineering tradition.

[Big s]

59 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

I was so thrown by the fact that the Wookiee was wearing clothes that I completely missed that he also had a shaved head and a topknot.

I had the exact opposite reaction, I wanted to look away, but just couldn’t stop staring at its head.

[Roy Focker]

There was some silly stuff but whatever. I'm kind of glad that the show is set 100 years outside of stuff we're most familiar with. It lets creators who've got then own wild and crazy ideas a chance to play around without ruining things. Maybe it ends up being good. If it stinks at least no damage was done.

[azrael]

Mmmkay...

Spoiler

So we have the crazy twin that blames everyone but herself.

 

[Big s]

37 minutes ago, azrael said:

Mmmkay...

  Reveal hidden contents

So we have the crazy twin that blames everyone but herself.

 

There’s definitely more to it going on. Yeah, she’s terrible, but for a Jedi to just commit suicide over things is a bit of a hint that things were more messed up. Horny Mom might’ve also had something to do with things as well

[TangledThorns]

Your feedback on this series has kept me from re-subscribing to Disney+ 🤣

[Big s]

1 hour ago, TangledThorns said:

Your feedback on this series has kept me from re-subscribing to Disney+ 🤣

Honestly, the best thing on there is X-Men 97. Beyond that there really hasn’t been anything worth watching the last couple years 

[mechaninac]

8 hours ago, Big s said:

Honestly, the best thing on there is X-Men 97. Beyond that there really hasn’t been anything worth watching the last couple years 

And you don't have to subscribe to D+ to legally watch it, if you want to, which means there is NOTHING in there truly worth paying for, at all, and hasn't been since Andor.

Edited June 12 by mechaninac

[Seto Kaiba]

9 hours ago, Big s said:

There’s definitely more to it going on. Yeah, she’s terrible, but for a Jedi to just commit suicide over things is a bit of a hint that things were more messed up. Horny Mom might’ve also had something to do with things as well

Eh... when all is said and done, The Acolyte is still Star Wars.  Its cosmos is underpinned by a higher power that maintains and rigidly enforces a simplistic Light is Good vs. Dark is Evil dichotomy on its adherants.  The Jedi are on the side of Light and therefore Good, and their opponents are on the side of Dark and therefore Evil.

For that reason, I suspect we won't be seeing any real shades of grey from The Acolyte.  The worst the Jedi are likely to get up to will likely not go beyond "Good is not Nice", while Dark Side users like Mae and her master remain the familiar overdramatic card-carrying villains we've already seen they are.

Spoiler

IMO, the events of "Destiny" have made it very likely that we'll soon learn the four Jedi who visited Brendok sixteen years ago were actually blameless.

Why?  Because we've now learned that Osha and Mae's parents were the leaders of a Dark Side-worshipping coven of witches who were living in hiding on Brendok because their misguided belief that Dark is not Evil and stereotypical Hollywood Evil Cult practices are frowned upon by, or banned by, the Republic.  If that wasn't enough, we've also learned that the fire that destroyed their home was set by Mae in an attempt to murder her own sister so she couldn't leave home to become a Jedi.  It seems likely that the destruction of the coven was also probably orchestrated by that unnamed Sith Lord and hardline members of the coven to discredit the Jedi and probably run off with their protege as a future apprentice.

Odds are Torbin committed suicide over his guilt for something that wasn't actually his fault at all.

 

 

5 hours ago, TangledThorns said:

Your feedback on this series has kept me from re-subscribing to Disney+ 🤣

Value for money, yeah... it's not worth it.  Unless you have small children.

[Thom]

Please, don't let Leslye Headland write any more for this show, or direct for that matter. This was definitely a better episode for that. It was nice to see what at least part of the back story is, and I'm sure we'll start to see the other side of what happened in the following episodes. 

Spoiler

Even though Mae is clearly showing psychotic tendencies, we only see her light the book on fire, but nothing of what happened outside of Osha's door until she sees her sister in the generator room. I find it hard to believe that a fire would move that quickly through a stone structure, so clearly something more funky went down, and I'm thinking it revolves around Mother Koril and Tobin. She was the most adverse to Osha leaving and Tobin is sporting that cool looking scar at the end. He was also mind-controlled for a moment there, so I wonder if that might have something to do with it too. And maybe the Sith were pulling strings as well, so they can't be ruled out. And who knows, maybe Koril was working with the Sith to bring Mae and Osha about and she killed all the others..?

Anyway, better episode this time.

 

EDIT - checking the Wiki page, Headland is not shown in the writer/director's chair for the remainder of the episodes, so yay right there.

Edited June 12 by Thom

[azrael]

10 minutes ago, Thom said:

Please, don't let Leslye Headland write any more for this show, or direct for that matter.

Ummm, she was the show runner. If she wasn’t directing or writing, she was in charge. Also they completed filming a year ago…

[Thom]

22 minutes ago, azrael said:

Ummm, she was the show runner. If she wasn’t directing or writing, she was in charge. Also they completed filming a year ago…

Oh yeah, I know they don't film week to week. No one days anymore. And I'd say that being a show runner is different from writing and directing. The writer/director can filter the show runner's creation, smoothing out inconsistencies (or just bad ideas) to something that flows a lot more organically and minus strange leaps in plot.

I don't know if it is because she did not write or direct this one, but is one better than the first two, where she did both with episode 1 and part in 2.

[Big s]

1 hour ago, Thom said:

Please, don't let Leslye Headland write any more for this show, or direct for that matter. This was definitely a better episode for that. It was nice to see what at least part of the back story is, and I'm sure we'll start to see the other side of what happened in the following episodes. 

  Reveal hidden contents

Even though Mae is clearly showing psychotic tendencies, we only see her light the book on fire, but nothing of what happened outside of Osha's door until she sees her sister in the generator room. I find it hard to believe that a fire would move that quickly through a stone structure, so clearly something more funky went down, and I'm thinking it revolves around Mother Koril and Tobin. She was the most adverse to Osha leaving and Tobin is sporting that cool looking scar at the end. He was also mind-controlled for a moment there, so I wonder if that might have something to do with it too. And maybe the Sith were pulling strings as well, so they can't be ruled out. And who knows, maybe Koril was working with the Sith to bring Mae and Osha about and she killed all the others..?

Anyway, better episode this time.

 

EDIT - checking the Wiki page, Headland is not shown in the writer/director's chair for the remainder of the episodes, so yay right there.

I was kinda thinking the same thing. 

Spoiler

That fire seemed to kill way too many witches far too easily. There had to have been something far more going on and if there wasn’t, then this show would go down as the worst written show in all history.

 I also don’t exactly trust that green Jedi lady. I don’t know if she just was covering for things or if there’s something more. More than likely it’s nothing, but I just don’t trust her 

Shaved wookies haunt my nightmares now. It’s like that horrific episode of the Venture Bros. with the six million dollar man and Bigfoot 

[jvmacross]

The crime committed...at least by the hippie Jedi...must have been so heinous and shameful as to make him decide to take his life rather than stain the order....this can go anywhere....

Also....why did Sol and Trinity focus only on Osha?  Based on what we saw of the "test" they had to have known Mae was also lying....why did they not call her out on it?  Wonder if the "mission" was to exterminate the coven and only recover the kids that could be "turned" into Jedi....

I have a bad feeling about where this is all going....although Obi-Wan's recollections about what the Jedi were to Luke have already been altered by the events of the PT....making the Jedi even worse than we already know is probably going to alienate even more "fans"....based on what we have seen of then in this new show...they seem to be on-par with the Empire that replaced them a century later...I have little info on the events that have been happening in the High Republic books...but I guess it must have had some radical effect on how they operate

[azrael]

4 minutes ago, jvmacross said:

Also....why did Sol and Trinity focus only on Osha?  Based on what we saw of the "test" they had to have known Mae was also lying....why did they not call her out on it?  Wonder if the "mission" was to exterminate the coven and only recover the kids that could be "turned" into Jedi....

They could tell she was being more hesitant, more uncertain. Mae was likely more direct with her answers, making her less likely to want to leave.

[Seto Kaiba]

9 minutes ago, jvmacross said:

The crime committed...at least by the hippie Jedi...must have been so heinous and shameful as to make him decide to take his life rather than stain the order....this can go anywhere....

Whatever it is that happened on Brendok sixteen years before The Acolyte's present day, it can't have been that bad.

After all, none of the four Jedi who visited Brendok were tried by the council and sent to The Citadel for incarceration.  None of the four were expelled from the Jedi Order either... like what happened to Ahsoka Tano and Bariss Offee.  Indara was already a Master, but both Sol and Torbin were subsequently promoted.  Torbin was promoted twice.  He was a padawan sixteen years ago and he's been a Master for something like ten years by the show's present day.  Sol was promoted from knight to Master and is allowed to teach the children in the main temple on Coruscant.  That's probably not something you do if you're guilty of the kind of heinous criminal act that only suicide can atone for.

My guess is they're feeling guilty for something which probably isn't actually their fault, because Star Wars requires the Jedi to be the embodiment of Lawful Good.  

 

9 minutes ago, jvmacross said:

Also....why did Sol and Trinity focus only on Osha?  Based on what we saw of the "test" they had to have known Mae was also lying....why did they not call her out on it?  Wonder if the "mission" was to exterminate the coven and only recover the kids that could be "turned" into Jedi....

Probably because Mae was very clear about not wanting to go, and there's probably some law against straight-up kidnapping as a form of recruitment.

 

 

[jvmacross]

2 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Whatever it is that happened on Brendok sixteen years before The Acolyte's present day, it can't have been that bad.

After all, none of the four Jedi who visited Brendok were tried by the council and sent to The Citadel for incarceration.  None of the four were expelled from the Jedi Order either... like what happened to Ahsoka Tano and Bariss Offee.  Indara was already a Master, but both Sol and Torbin were subsequently promoted.  Torbin was promoted twice.  He was a padawan sixteen years ago and he's been a Master for something like ten years by the show's present day.  Sol was promoted from knight to Master and is allowed to teach the children in the main temple on Coruscant.  That's probably not something you do if you're guilty of the kind of heinous criminal act that only suicide can atone for.

My guess is they're feeling guilty for something which probably isn't actually their fault, because Star Wars requires the Jedi to be the embodiment of Lawful Good.  

 

 

 

 

Dunno....I thought no one other than the 4 of them know about what happened on Brendock?  Osha clearly does not know and she would have been the only surviving witness

[jvmacross]

33 minutes ago, azrael said:

They could tell she was being more hesitant, more uncertain. Mae was likely more direct with her answers, making her less likely to want to leave.

not sure about that....Osha was giving the wrong answer and Sol kept saying she was correct, hoping she would not keep up with the 'lie'...so he/they were seemingly only interested in her joining them and not Mae...afterall, they could have used the same tactic with Mae, but conveniently did not show us how her 'test' unfolded...as shown in the series, these 'High Republic' era Jedi seem to have no issues violating anyone's free will if it suits them...or more correctly stated...if the plot requires it! 

[jvmacross]

35 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Whatever it is that happened on Brendok sixteen years before The Acolyte's present day, it can't have been that bad.

After all, none of the four Jedi who visited Brendok were tried by the council and sent to The Citadel for incarceration.  None of the four were expelled from the Jedi Order either... like what happened to Ahsoka Tano and Bariss Offee.  Indara was already a Master, but both Sol and Torbin were subsequently promoted.  Torbin was promoted twice.  He was a padawan sixteen years ago and he's been a Master for something like ten years by the show's present day.  Sol was promoted from knight to Master and is allowed to teach the children in the main temple on Coruscant.  That's probably not something you do if you're guilty of the kind of heinous criminal act that only suicide can atone for.

My guess is they're feeling guilty for something which probably isn't actually their fault, because Star Wars requires the Jedi to be the embodiment of Lawful Good.  

 

 

 

 

Another thing is that these Jedi are apparently at their prime of arrogance...who knows what sort of things they are willing to turn a blind eye to in the name of keeping their reputation as the pinnacle of infallability and righteousness...I am still under the assumption that whatever happened on Brendock is some dark secret only the four of them have kept to themselves....and that they may have agreed among each other to hide that truth and stick to some other narrative....I think meditating and not speaking for 10 years while floating 3 feet in the air would go a long way at keeping the secret from coming out, especially from the Jedi who was likely the weakest link on that day...the padawan...also, Jedi Chewbacca's seemingly self-imposed exile seems odd to me....shouldn't he be out 'Jedi'ing' for the masses?

Why do I have a feeling buying into some comic books and novels will be required to get all the answers?

Edited June 12 by jvmacross

[Big s]

43 minutes ago, jvmacross said:

Why do I have a feeling buying into some comic books and novels will be required to get all the answers?

I think this show is simpler than that and will probably explain things as we go. They’re only on episode three and I’m pretty sure they’re off to see the shaved wookie more than likely in the next episode. Although, I don’t know if we’ll understand its answers. 

[Roy Focker]

Pretty confident that the one their mothers was behind the whole thing. So many clues and Mae's actions  wasn't enough to cause all that destruction. Floating Jedi aided her in some way.

[Seto Kaiba]

1 hour ago, jvmacross said:

Dunno....I thought no one other than the 4 of them know about what happened on Brendock?  Osha clearly does not know and she would have been the only surviving witness

Master Indara's group of Jedi were on Brendok surveiling a coven of witches, apparently for an extended period of time.  Long enough for the witches to have noticed them in turn and been monitoring their whereabouts.  Sol also makes a remark that suggests they were surveiling specific people on suspicion of criminal activity.  That's official investigation territory, meaning they were almost certainly sent there by the Jedi Council and would be expected to report their findings. 

Trying to lie to a committee made up of telepaths who can sense deception is not a winning strategy to begin with, and pointed questions will surely be asked about where Sol came by that freshly traumatized child he's calling his new apprentice and why the child is traumatized.

Osha might not know what specifically happened, but she knows she saw the aftermath of a mass casualty event and that's not the kind of news you can keep a lid on.

 

51 minutes ago, jvmacross said:

Another thing is that these Jedi are apparently at their prime of arrogance...who knows what sort of things they are willing to turn a blind eye to in the name of keeping their reputation as the pinnacle of infallability and righteousness...I am still under the assumption that whatever happened on Brendock is some dark secret only the four of them have kept to themselves....and that they may have agreed among each other to hide that truth and stick to some other narrative....I think meditating and not speaking for 10 years while floating 3 feet in the air would go a long way at keeping the secret from coming out, especially from the Jedi who was likely the weakest link on that day...the padawan...also, Jedi Chewbacca's seemingly self-imposed exile seems odd to me....shouldn't he be out 'Jedi'ing' for the masses?

Why do I have a feeling buying into some comic books and novels will be required to get all the answers?

Fair, though it doesn't quite track with how the Jedi in The Acolyte started this series explicitly on a mission to apprehend Indara's killer specifically so the Jedi Order could make an example of her because the killer was (wrongly) believed to be an ex-Jedi.

The Jedi seem to want to show the galaxy that their all-powerful unsupervised magic lawmen are self-policing... which may or may not have something to do with the Republic's having built a prison specifically to hold renegade Force users a few hundred years earlier.

I watched a lore video earlier that explained the vow that Torbin took, and if his goal was to cover up that he participated in something horrid that is the wrong way to do it.  That vow he took is apparently a penitent's vow that a Jedi only takes if they've screwed up so epically that they believe they are incapable of functioning as a member of the Order.  If his fellow residents of the temple know he's taken that vow (and they do) then they know he's done something particularly heinous.  It's basically the Jedi version of a nobleman being forced to take holy orders and become a cloistered monk to escape some public dishonor.

[jvmacross]

27 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

 

Trying to lie to a committee made up of telepaths who can sense deception is not a winning strategy to begin with, and pointed questions will surely be asked about where Sol came by that freshly traumatized child he's calling his new apprentice and why the child is traumatized.

 

You just said a few posts above that they 'detected' Ohsa's weariness during her 'test'....yet are not powerful enough to detect the same 'deception' from Mae...an elementary-aged kid with no apparent mastery of the Force...errr...Thread?...unless you are saying only those on the Jedi Council have that 'deception' detecting ability? 

It may not be wise to try and apply logic to a show that is seemingly abandoning it at a faster pace than other Disney+ Star Wars shows so far...

[jvmacross]

1 hour ago, Seto Kaiba said:

 

I watched a lore video earlier that explained the vow that Torbin took, and if his goal was to cover up that he participated in something horrid that is the wrong way to do it.  That vow he took is apparently a penitent's vow that a Jedi only takes if they've screwed up so epically that they believe they are incapable of functioning as a member of the Order.  If his fellow residents of the temple know he's taken that vow (and they do) then they know he's done something particularly heinous.  It's basically the Jedi version of a nobleman being forced to take holy orders and become a cloistered monk to escape some public dishonor.

Nah....I really do not want to go down that rabbit hole of needing to 'research' the answers to the missing pieces on the webs...but I either just watched the same or a similar video of the same 'lore' that apparently covers material showcased in the books and comics...the vow apparently can be taken if you simply want to be better attuned to the Force....regardless....it apparently doesn't mean you did something bad, so it's a good 'cover' if you know you are too 'weak' to keep yourself from spilling the beans....

It's funny because I had just made a post saying that this show was going to be another entry in the Star Wars franchise that will require external 'reading' to get the whole picture straight.....feel free to keep doing your 'research' so the rest of us don't have to...I certainly do not want to waste my time again...it's among the worst things to have happened during the Disney Star Wars era...

Edited June 13 by jvmacross

[Seto Kaiba]

56 minutes ago, jvmacross said:

You just said a few posts above that they 'detected' Ohsa's weariness during her 'test'....yet are not powerful enough to detect the same 'deception' from Mae...an elementary-aged kid with no apparent mastery of the Force...errr...Thread?...unless you are saying only those on the Jedi Council have that 'deception' detecting ability? 

Considering how... vocal... Mae is in this episode when it came to her disapproval of the Jedi and her sister's desire to join then, what makes you assume the Jedi had to be fooled into not recruiting Mae?

When we see Osha being tested, Indara and Sol can tell right away that she's deliberately trying to fail because her family doesn't want to be separated from her.  Sol then directly asks her what she wants, and after a brief discussion she says "I want to be a Jedi".  They almost certainly put Mae through the same thing and almost certainly got the opposite answer, that Mae didn't want to leave her family and become a Jedi.

 

56 minutes ago, jvmacross said:

It may not be wise to try and apply logic to a show that is seemingly abandoning it at a faster pace than other Disney+ Star Wars shows so far...

So far, I'm not seeing the series abandoning logic... at least not any more than Star Wars usually does when the spacemagic of the Force is involved.  

It is undeniably poorly written though.  Like others have said, it has that definite fanfic vibe.

 

1 hour ago, jvmacross said:

It's funny because I had just made a post saying that this show was going to be another entry in the Star Wars franchise that will require external 'reading' to get the whole picture straight.....feel free to keep doing your 'research' so the rest of us don't have to...I certainly do not want to waste my time again...it's among the worst things to have happened during the Disney Star Wars era...

The funny thing is I wasn't even looking for it... ever since I watched The Acolyte trailer my YouTube recommendations have been full of Star Wars lore videos for some reason.

Prerequisite-wise, it's definitely less onerous than Ahsoka requiring me to watch seven seasons of a mediocre cartoon and read three novels from the 80's to figure out why anyone would be insane enough to give Anakin an apprentice and why Elon Musk joined the Blue Man Group and violated a space whale in order to make stormtroopers even less effective by zombifying them.

Like I said a while back, it's real easy to tell that The Acolyte was written for fans not for casual audiences.  The reference density just does not support casual viewing.  The two Tales of titles were the same way.

[jvmacross]

1 hour ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Considering how... vocal... Mae is in this episode when it came to her disapproval of the Jedi and her sister's desire to join then, what makes you assume the Jedi had to be fooled into not recruiting Mae?

When we see Osha being tested, Indara and Sol can tell right away that she's deliberately trying to fail because her family doesn't want to be separated from her.  Sol then directly asks her what she wants, and after a brief discussion she says "I want to be a Jedi".  They almost certainly put Mae through the same thing and almost certainly got the opposite answer, that Mae didn't want to leave her family and become a Jedi.

 

As you insinuated in a previous post, the Jedi would be able to detect deception....If so, then why would they go through with testing Mae to begin with if they could sense she wanted nothing to do with them?  Or does that ability just manifests itself when the plot requires it to? 

When you said that you were not seeing the series abandoing logic, you could not have possibly typed that with a straight face...lol  There are way too many things in the show that make no sense and are seemingly just written off or ignored for the sake of keeping the plot moving.....like how the Jedi are OK with using mind gimmicks with some, like the escaped prisoner in the first episode...but not with the Mae's accomplice to murder? C'mon.....they have him on a recording saying that the 'master' is going to be pleased or something like that....I think it was even mentioned by one of the Jedi when they busted into his shop.....of all the people to have used a Jedi mind trick on it would have been that guy!....but then maybe the mystery would have been solved I suppose....

Edited June 13 by jvmacross

[Seto Kaiba]

2 minutes ago, jvmacross said:

As you insinuated in a previous post, the Jedi would be able to detect deception....If so, then why would they go through with testing Mae to begin with if they could sense she wanted nothing to do with them?  Or does that ability just manifests itself when the plot requires it to? 

The Jedi forget they have superpowers with monotonous regularity... I even noted that the reason...

Spoiler

Mae "dies" as a child in the third episode

... is because Sol seemingly forgot he can use the Force to levitate things.

Mind you, I think the answer is right there in the series.  They assumed (correctly) that the girls had been instructed by their parents to try to fail the test, and asked them what they truly wanted.  Osha wanted to be a Jedi, Mae didn't.  If Mae had actually managed to fool the Jedi into thinking she didn't have Force powers, Sol would probably have rejected the idea that Mae could be the assassin once Osha was exonerated.  (The lie was never going to work anyway, because we see the Jedi take blood samples for midichlorian testing.)

 

2 minutes ago, jvmacross said:

When you said that you were not seeing the series abandoing logic, you could not have possibly typed that with a straight face...lol 

I believe my exact words were...

1 hour ago, Seto Kaiba said:

at least not any more than Star Wars usually does when the spacemagic of the Force is involved. 

😉 

Dumb sh*t - often plot-convenient dumb sh*t - happens constantly when Force users are involved.  What happened with Qimir is way less egregious than the prequel trilogy's Jedi Council spending so much time around Palpatine and never realizing he was the Sith Lord they were looking for, or even that he could use the Force... something that the prequels established could be tested for objectively and scientifically with minimal effort.

At least what happened with Qimir fits the idea of the Jedi as arrogant and sloppy in this era.  They were about to start rifling around in his brains to find answers and stopped just because he started volunteering information.  (I even commented on how stupid it was that Sol offered to let him off with a warning when his crime was, at the very least, being an accomplice to the very murder they were there to investigate.)

[kajnrig]

24 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

It is undeniably poorly written though.  Like others have said, it has that definite fanfic vibe.

Poor writing and fanfiction aren't synonymous. Some of the best - heck, arguably THE best - parts of Star Wars are for all intents and purposes just "elevated" fanfiction.

It IS poorly-written, though, that much is true. Or at the very least, it's muddled writing. Unclear. Imprecise. It seems to want to depict the Jedi as well-doing sages... but more often than not it shows them imposing themselves on others. It seems to want us to empathize with the witch coven... but it shows them being antagonistic and collectively a bit overquick on the figurative draw. It seems to want us to think of the personal drama between Osha et al as just that: dramatic... but more often than not it shows everyone kind of just talking past each other.

The acting feels wooden, and I can only suspect that this was a result of the directing... or show-running... or something beyond the ability of the actors themselves to change, because I've seen better from all of them. (Or at least all of them that I recognize.)

The sisterly relationship doesn't have any of the wrinkles, nuances, etc. that you see from real siblings, much less twins. I see that the actresses who played Young Mae and Osha are actual twins, and it would have been nice to see them maybe inject some of their real-life experience as such into the roles. Or tweak the script here and there to show as much. Have them be extra empathetic to each other. Have them able to predict the other's behaviors. Have them be increasingly perturbed by their lack of unity over their future. Let the actors chew the scenery a bit more than not at all. On the other hand, I suppose The Acolyte is again only following the lead of the prequel movies. Still doesn't make it okay, though.

[Big s]

4 hours ago, jvmacross said:

It may not be wise to try and apply logic to a show that is seemingly abandoning it at a faster pace than other Disney+ Star Wars shows so far...

I think this is the best response to the show so far. People shouldn’t over read into this because of layers of stupidity that will fold and unfold as the show goes on