Seacseh

Flawed but interesting. Uneven quality. Lots of promise. Those are probably the main points of description that come to mind thinking of The Acolyte. There seems to be a crisis of identity in whether it wants to be the Star Wars equivalent of a kung fu action movie, murder mystery, or philosophical geopolitical (astropolitical?) deep cut, such that it never feels like it's cleanly balancing between genres but can be a bit torn between them instead. That said, there are a ton of cool ideas throughout this show. Duality is a really interesting theme, and watching Osha and Mae's arcs dovetail together and split apart equally and oppositely was fascinating. Qimir is excellent and I will tolerate no criticism of him. The middle of the season had easily one of the best lightsaber battles we've ever seen in Star Wars. By itself, total 10/10 stuff, absolutely excellent. The cast, particularly Lee Jung-jae of Squid Games, were all talented and effective. Unfortunately, the writing choices gave out. The episodes were far too short for an 8-episode season to feel like there was much meat on the bones. The ending feels unsatisfying, like it was betting on a sequel season that we now know will never come. And that's very disappointing. Some of the best stuff in Star Wars started off weakly, especially The Clone Wars, but were given time and room to grow and become something special. The Acolyte will now never get that chance. Furthermore, it was the first largely original new Star Wars series since Disney bought the franchise from George Lucas: no connection to the original trilogy or sequels, little connection to the prequels, and based on nothing written by Lucas (unlike the sequels which were based on a draft he handed off). Disney is now knee-capping its first major original effort in favor of sticking to familiar territory. In doing so, it risks Star Wars withering away on the vine as, instead of growing into something interesting, it just grows increasingly stale. For all its flaws, The Acolyte was certainly something interesting.