The Acolyte is Disney’s latest Star Wars TV Show
The Acolyte TV Show is set around 100 years before Episode 1: The Phantom Menace. There are thousands of Jedi in the universe, and the Sith have been extinct for a millenia. That is until a mysterious acolyte begins killing Jedi Masters.
The show starts off really strong with a battle between a mysterious assassin and a Jedi Master, which results in the Jedi Master’s death. We are then introduced to a young ex-Jedi girl working on a space freighter. Hints are dropped that she might be the assassin, and Jedi show up to investigate.
This is where the show quality falls off though…
I mean it had a good setup. Sounds like a cool enough story. The trailer for The Acolyte was also pretty good. I believed that we might be getting another good TV series like “Andor”, “Ashoka“, or “The Mandalorian”, but unfortunately “The Acolyte” is a bit of a letdown.
Disney didn’t focus on writing a good story for “The Acolyte”
As is with most things Disney right now, they are giving jobs to unqualified people in the name of “diversity”. They are focusing on the “inclusion” of political messaging instead of on story and quality.
What exactly did they do this time? Well, for starters the second episode introduces lesbian space witches who can make children without men. They follow that up with mention of the “chosen one” prophecy, force diodes, high midichlorian counts, and the rebranding of force witches into dark magic users.
Star Wars has long had Dathomirian Witches, and they are a very cool part of the universe. They fit it and show up all throughout the Star Wars timelines in books, video games, and tv shows. Dathomir Witches use the Force in a different way. In an almost perverted way. There use of the Force has always been seen as a dark side-ish variant, but this show takes it to a new level.
These new witches are painted as “normal” women who hate the idea of Jedi controlling them. They want to live with only women, chanting at night, creating force babies, and entering peoples minds to control them. The whole thing is very cultish and spiritual, but not in a Star Wars way. It’s pretty much as lame as it sounds.
The Acting in “The Acolyte” is pretty good
The writing is bad, but many of the actors were great choices. I particularly enjoyed Sol, one of the primary Jedi Masters seen in the show. Jedi Master Sol is played by Lee Jung-jae, who apparently leared English just for this role. The actor also says that he studied and pulled inspiration from Qui-gon’s character in Episode 1: The Phantom Menace.
Manny Jacinto is another great actor who plays the mysterious Sith Master. A lot of my favorite scenes throughout the show revolved around him. I think that if Disney had focused a bit more on the actual story of “The Acolyte”, that they could have really had something incredible.
But Disney being Disney, had to go and #$%& it up. Trying to push woke agendas and please vocal minorities, instead of leaning into their already large and loving fanbase. Hopefully Disney learns returns to a focus on Family and Entertainment one day.
Overall thoughts on “Star Wars: The Acolyte”
The lightsaber fight scenes are good. The Sith has a scene in the later episodes where he fights multiple Jedi at the same time. Some folks are complaining about the choreography, but I personally liked it. I thought it was one of the few saving graces for the show.
Overall I cannot recommend Star Wars: The Acolyte. It is just an “okay” show, and if I wasn’t such a sucker for Star Wars shows, I would even call it trash. I did however enjoy parts of it, so I guess it might be worth a watch if you are a huge Star Wars fan like me.
