WITNESS!: The Acolyte just aired its own Fury Road episode

Warning: This article contains spoilers for episode 5 of The Acolyte episode 5.

Okay… you can breathe now.

But you are forgiven if you found yourself holding your breath throughout episode 5 of Disney+’s The Acolyte. The entire installment was essentially one extended action sequence — filled with shocks, lightsaber battles, and a lot of dead Jedi. It was as if Star Wars channeled Mad Max: Fury Road. The only thing missing was a Doof Warrior spraying streams of fire from a guitar-shaped laser sword.

The big reveal was the unmasking of Mae’s (Amandla Stenberg) mysterious master, who turned out to be Manny Jacinto’s goofy apothecary Qimir, because there is simply no one better than the former Good Place star when it comes to playing one character pretending to be another character. (BORTLES!)

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But that was not the biggest surprise of the episode. The real shock was how many Jedi the Sith Lord killed upon his introduction. Sure, there were the rando Jedi that accompanied the main characters to Khofar and had the word “Expendable” practically tattooed on their foreheads. But Jacinto’s Sith did not stop there. He lightsaber-stabbed Dafne Keen’s Jecki Lon multiple times to her death, brutally taking down the Padawan right before his face was revealed for the first time. And he wasn’t done. The big bad also effortlessly snapped the neck of Jedi Knight Yord Fandar (Charlie Barnett), killing a second major character in a mere matter of minutes. (And let’s not forget about poor Kelnacca, rotting away in his little hut with a lightsaber slash across his furry chest.)

In addition to all those fights, the action-packed episode also featured a lightsaber battle between Jacinto’s Sith and Lee Jung-jae’s Master Sol — with Sol almost striking down the unarmed opponent before being stopped by his former Padawan Osha (Stenberg) — as well as a rollicking back-and-forth brawl between Mae and Jecki.

And the installment also included the first extended interaction between twins Mae and Osha, who came face to face near the end of the episode. After Mae told Osha the Jedi had brainwashed her and turned sister against sister (“I love you. Don’t choose them again. Please choose me. Choose us. We both survived. All we have is each other now.”), Osha attempted to arrest her sister, leading her twin to knock her out.

And then, a bit of deception. Mae took a lightsaber and cut off her own hair to match Osha’s, and then assumed her place to go undercover amongst the Jedi. Whether she plans to kill Sol (the last of four names on her hit list) or gain information that can be used against them remains to be seen, but that was only one side of the switcheroo. At the very end of the episode, Jacinto’s unnamed villain came across a passed out Osha, putting his cape over her as a blanket while noting, “What extraordinary beings we are. Even in the revelation of our triumph, we see the depth of our despair.”

Despair is certainly apt for the Jedi, who just lost multiple members of their order to an adversary they don’t even appear to fully understand, thanks to the Sith hiding in the shadows for centuries since the days of Darth Bane.

The episode qualifies as the most savage and brutal extended action we have yet to see in the streaming Star Wars galaxy of live-action shows, never letting up for a minute. It also raises the stakes for a series that already set them pretty gosh darn high after murdering a Jedi in the very first scene of its premiere.

And now, with Mae and Osha having swapped spots, the pieces on the game board have been completely reset, leading one to wonder how many more will fall over the next three episodes on their way to Valhalla. WITNESS!