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Mae’s hatred of the Jedi is palpable, and after this week’s The Acolyte, we fully understand why.
Tuesday’s episode jumped 16 years into the past to uncover what really happened on Brendok the night she started the fire that supposedly killed her entire coven.
Jedi Masters Sol, Kelnacca and Indara, as well as Indara’s Padawan Tobin, had been residing on the planet for seven weeks in search of a vergence, aka a concentration of Force energy that was capable of creating life. Brendok, which was perceived as lifeless, was flourishing with it.
Their mission seemed fruitless until Sol spotted Mae and her twin sister Osha in the forest — revisiting that moment at the start of Episode 3. What we didn’t see in that previous episode, though, was Sol following the girls all the way to their settlement and watching their training in the way of the Force under Mother Aniseya’s (Jodie Turner-Smith) tutelage.
He relayed his findings to his Jedi cohorts and Tobin suspected the witches were Nightsisters (witches from Dathomir who specialized in dark magick). But according to Indara, the Nightsisters weren’t known to raise younglings let alone train them. Sol, worried that the twins might be in danger, urged his Jedi friends to see for themselves.
When the Jedi showed up to the Ascension, subsequent scenes illustrated how Aniseya took control of Tobin’s mind by enticing him with his greatest desire (to return to Coruscant). Due to the intrusion, Osha did not receive the same dark markings as Mae. Something tells us this will come back up in the finale.
Later, young Mae took the Jedi test and Indara used that opportunity to pry for more details about the Ascension. But Sol was onto the witches’ plan for Mae to purposely fail and took a different approach with Osha. Despite Osha passing, the Jedi refused to sign off on bringing the twins to Coruscant and separating them from their coven. And when Sol offered to speak with their bosses, Indara pointed out that he was too emotionally attached.
Remember in Episode 3 when Mother Koris ominously asked Aniseya, “And what happens if the Jedi discover how you created them?” That was finally addressed!
Tobin examined Mae and Osha’s blood test results and noticed that their symbionts were exactly the same, meaning they were artificially created. Aniseya, it seems, tapped into a power dense enough to split one consciousness into two bodies. And according to Sol, only a vergence can create that kind of power.
With Tobin in tow, Sol rushed to confront Aniseya and Koril over the twins’ origin. The witches and Jedi then braced for a fight, and Osha watched as Sol drove his lightsaber through Aniseya’s chest.
Making that moment even more tragic was Aniseya using her last breath to tell Sol that she was going to let Osha leave. And as Osha cried over her mother’s body, white markings revealed that it was actually Mae!
Flames from the fire set by Mae spread around Sol and Tobin, but they were more concerned with Kelnacca, whose mind was now in control of the witches. The witches swayed in unison — their breathy chanting adding to the mystique — while coercing the Wookiee into battling his friends. Thankfully, Indara eventually broke Kelnacca free of the mind control, and the witches dropping altogether suggested they died in the process.
Back on that collapsed bridge where Mae and Osha stared across from each other, we did NOT see how Mae survived what should have been a deadly fall. Instead, the scene jumped to the Jedi ship, where Osha lay unconscious. Sol was prepared to face the Jedi Council about what happened on Brendok, but Indara pushed him to tell their version of the truth: Mae started a fire and everyone was lost.
When Osha woke, begging for her mother, Sol spun that story.
Thoughts on this week’s episode of The Acolyte?
I’ve really enjoyed this show so far but this episode was a waste. Episode 5 was great and episode 6 was a great follow up. This episode just ruins the flow of it all. An entire episode didn’t need to be dedicated to this. We all knew something had happened. This could have been explained by Sol to Mae within 5 minutes and then there would have been more time to allow episode 7 to set up for the finale.
Have to agree. Nothing revealed in the episode came as a big shock so it really could have been explained in a couple of scenes.
No Qimir, repeated scenes from earlier episode, and nothing really happened we didn’t already know about. We don’t need filler in an 8 episode series and we should be focusing on the best character instead of…this.
Didn’t understand why they returned to this point in the story despite it being the focus earlier in the season. Completely broke the momentum from the last two episodes which moved everything forward, while finally introducing an interesting new villain, only to go backwards and idle upon something that was kind of obvious and that could have been fully fleshed out in that earlier episode.
A sadly meandering waste of time.
The Jedi really have been made to look flawed and broken in this series. Stupidity, arrogance, lack of emotional control, and lack of force discipline should not be common among their lower ranks. The weakness of Torbin and the lack of emotional control of Sol lead to the confrontation in the first place. Kelnacka being unable to resist the mind powers of the witches speaks to lack of force discipline, and the arrogance of Indra thinking she could free Kelnacka without harming the witches or the indifference to their lives, was unacceptable. She failed as a leader and the result was 50 innocent women were murdered, and the murders went unpunished. In fact they got to kidnap and raise Osha just like Sol wanted. This was all a very bad look for the Jedi.
and the entire point of the show – that the Jedi can also make mistakes and be corruptible.
We already saw this in episodes 1-3 and in plenty of the animated shows, and it was a major plot point of episode 6, and again in episodes 7-9. If anything the point of the show is to show that the dark side isn’t as blatantly evil as you might think. The inflexibility of the Jedi combined with methodology of killing or imprisoning those who don’t share their ideals is what leads the witches into hiding and creates Sith Lords out of former Jedi. The whole point of the order is to teach emotional suppression and rejection. Yet all the Jedi in this series are emotional, and people keep getting hurt as a result.
Jedi aren’t interesting unless they’re fallible. They need to act like human beings, not statuesque paragons. It’s already bad enough they can never do romance. Notice how nearly all Star Wars media has them breaking the “rules” in one way or another? It’s because they need to be actual characters.
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What was Aniseya doing to Mae that made Sol stab her?
That’s the big problem for me with Disney SW, heroes can’t be heroes who are special like they used to be they have to be very ‘human’ (just like in real life society loves bringing down heroes/celebs/the rich/people in authority whether they deserve it or not like communists) and all villains have a sob back story that is supposed to exonerate their horrible murderous behavior and get sympathy (imagine that mindset to real life murderers??).
lucas started all this with the prequels, maybe even before that with obi wan and yoda withholding the truth about vader from luke.
The Jedi really have been made to look flawed and broken since Disney took over for some stupid reason, that didn’t just start here.
lucas has shown the flaws behind the jedi since the prequels ‘clone wars’ series, maybe even before that with obi wan and yoda keeping the truth from luke about his father.
There was maybe five minutes of new content here. We didn’t need a 40 minute episode explaining it all, especially with so many scenes we had already scene.
Actually, what exactly did Jedi Master Indara do to the Nightsisters that killed them all.
I think, when they are linked as part of “casting a spell” or using the force, when you break that chain the feedback kills them all.
They’re not dead. The witches just sustained feedback from breakage of the spell and passed out. Magic has a cost in nearly ALL fantasy. IF they die, it’s because they don’t wake before the fire and smoke kills them. Mother Koril wasn’t in that chanting group, but the way. She could’ve saved her coven.
I suspect there’s still another layer to this onion. We never saw Indara talking with the council. And Mother Koril was not among the dead. I think we’re going to see one of them return as Qimir’s master.
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I’m also intrigued by the coven’s smoke powers. When Sol killed Aniseya (by mistake, I think), Mae was also turning to smoke. I wonder what that has to do with their ability to create life.
I don’t understand why Sol killed Aniseya.
Can anyone please explain?
It read as an accident to me, that Sol didn’t realize that his lightsaber touching her mist form would kill her.
I’m pretty sure he didn’t know what she was doing, so he rushed in. He seemed horrified that it actually killed her.
Sol reacted out of fear. He thought that the ritual (Ascension,) was designed as a way to sacrifice the children to gain power (it might have been,) and so when he sees her turn into mist, and Mae begin reacting to it, he strikes out. In reality, he had no idea what she was doing, and so he betrayed the Jedi code, committed murder, and did it from the dark side. Afterward he realized what he had done and refused to fight further.
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Indara used her own force training and powers to expel the witches from Kelnaca. The problem was the witches were killed as a result. Indara would not sacrifice a Jedi regardless of the circumstances to atone for the crimes of her group. We don’t know what would have happened if she killed Kelnaca, (maybe the witches die anyway,) but Indara could have removed the arms of the Kelnaca with her light saber in a more restrained alternative. She prioritizes the safety of her people even knowing they were the aggressors and invaders, and murders in this situation. Then she covered it up and escaped the consequences. She may not have turned to the dark side, but she was no Jedi after this.
Total waste of an episode, but in true Disney+ fashion they do this with all of their Star Wars/Marvel shows and throw in a filler ep right before the finale and they have yet to deliver a Finale except for Season 1 of Mando and Andor
I feel like they set up that the Jedi did something really bad intentionally and Osha never knew. But here we learn that 4 unprepared Jedi rushed in and accidentally caused a massacre. Many different people working at cross purposes and all Mae remembers is seeing Sol kill her mother because he had no idea if she posed a threat. We needed the additional perspectives, but maybe not the full episode, however.
Don’t leave out the implication that Sol allowed Mae to fall. He struggled to keep both sides of the bridge from falling, then seemingly chose to focus on saving Osha. As a result, Mae fell first. When Sol couldn’t hold Osha’s side of the bridge and she fell a few moments later, he was able to grab her. All of this may have been hinted at earlier, but now it’s been seemingly confirmed.
So in Star Wars we finally get to see something really cool: a Jedi Wookie. And what does this show do? Makes him weak minded and incapable. And all for what really? To demonstrate the power of the witches which only has the practicle affect of doing what? Watering down what made Anakin “The One”. Awful. Just awful.
Weak minded, it took 49 witches to control him. He used his raw strength and force powers to take out both Sol and Torbin before being taken by surprise by a Jedi Master. They warned you in prior episodes that Wookie Jedi’s are dangerous, now you know why.
Actually, I liked the episode, and I thought it was necessary to fully understand the characters and their motivations.
I always had a problem within the prior Star Wars film universe with the simplistic black-and-white the characters. (It is probably different in the books, but I haven’t read any.) The Jedi are all good, and use the “light” side of the Force; whereas the Sith are all bad, and use the “dark” side of the Force. Consequently, I never fully understood why Anakin Skywalker embraced the “dark” side.
In the Acolyte series, we see that there are shades of gray in the characters–and even in the different sides of the Force. And these shades of gray help to explain the political dynamics that set up the movie series.
jedi teaching did not help anakin to deal with his issues about his mother, padme and that played into palpatine’s hands as he had been grooming the boy to go dark side over a decade or more.
obi wan and yoda’s ‘advice’ and teaching made things worse.
people are really painting false narratives on TV characters now. leave out the part where they trap osha in the complex and anyesia turns herself into a 8 ft tall pure pure black force mist and starts turning mae aswell. then “and Osha watched as Sol drove his lightsaber through Aniseya’s chest.” the show showed osha trapped on the other side of the complex like the scene before lmaoo
Hey… you folks commenting on this know this isn’t real, correct?