Having had time to sleep on the finale and think on the series as a whole I think I’ve identified the biggest issues with the series. This post will mostly be focused on the negatives of the show as I see them so while it may come across that I thought the show was bad, I do still ultimately like the show. First off the show has a big issue with characterizing both Mae and Osha, with Mae facing the brunt of the characterization issues. Her character starts off well enough with her drive for revenge and when we learn the reason for it her motivations make a lot of sense, but the issues start to show when we get to her character arc. When she decides to betray her master in episode 4, and turn herself into the Jedi it doesn’t feel natural. On paper I could see how it could kind of make sense, she wanted revenge on the Jedi because she thought they killed her entire family including Osha but with the revelation that Osha is alive her need to reconnect with her sister takes precedence. However, it doesn’t come across as a natural course for her character development to take because we didn’t really get to know enough about Mae beforehand for this to come across as making sense for her character. That has a lasting negative chain effect on her character arc up until the final episode.
This brings me to Osha, the show does a much better job with her characterization and other than the weird opening to episode 4, it does a much better job of seeding her character arc through the show to where it makes sense. Her feelings of loss, her anger at her sister, her failure to become a Jedi all of this stuff is written decently, which unfortunately brings me to the real reason the characters don’t really work as well as they should have, Amandla Stenberg’s performance. I haven’t seen them in much but I really liked them as an actor in the stuff I have seen. They were fantastic as Rue in The Hunger Games, and their performance in The Hate U Give was incredibly nuanced and raw, but they don’t do that great of a job here. Maybe it’s because of the dialogue writing which seems to be trying to emulate George Lucas’s way of writing dialogue in places, but the acting for both characters mostly comes across as stilted throughout much of the series. There are places where her acting is good and on point, but because she is ostensibly the main character having stilted acting muddles the character arc both characters are supposed to have even more.
This brings me to the other issue that hampers the series, the pacing. For better and worse this is very much a Disney+ streaming series in that the show is too long for its own good. Like so many other series this show feels like a movie that was forced to be artificially stretched out into a series due to the Disney overlord’s demanding more content to get people to subscribe to Disney+. Now I have no idea whether or not this is true, for all I know it was always pitched as an 8 episode series and they just didn’t do a good enough job of writing that amount of episodes but it still feels that way. The episodes have the issue of both being too short, and not feeling like they have enough happening in them at the same time. I think episodes 4 and 6 suffer from this predicament the most in that despite being relatively short it doesn’t feel like enough happens in them to justify the runtime. The 2 exceptions to this rule are episodes 5 and 8. With episode 5 it’s because despite being really short it’s packed full of action and things going on, and with episode 8 it’s because it’s one of the longer episodes in the series and also has a lot going on in it because it’s the culmination of the series. If the rest of the episodes had enough material in them as those 2 we would be having a much different discussion. I also think that making this a weekly release was a mistake and that they should’ve dropped all 8 episodes as a binge as I feel that watching all episodes at once would’ve worked better. That brings me to the biggest issue which is the structure of the series with the 2 flashback episodes.
The first flashback episode shows the events mostly from Osha’s point of view and adds even more questions to be answered such as what exactly are Mae and Osha. The problem with the flashback episodes is their placement in the series. On paper putting the first flashback as episode three after we’ve introduced all of the characters and the full scope of the conflict makes sense, and putting the final flashback episode in episode 7 right before the finale, with the final events of episode 6 being what they are makes sense, but in practice it completely ruins the pacing and buildup to that point. Putting the first flashback in episode 3 instead ends up putting the story to a halt just as it was starting to ramp up and build momentum, and putting the second flashback in episode 7 makes the series feel as if it won’t be able to conclude it’s story in the final episode. Also separating the flashback was also a mistake as both don’t really feel substantial enough on their own. The 2 flashback episodes should’ve been combined into 1 episode and I think then it should’ve been placed either as the first episode or putting right after episode 5 would’ve been the better way to go.
All that being said I did enjoy the show as a whole and I think the finale was really good and really ties the whole show together really well. I really loved what the show did with Sol in revealing that he really did all of this for himself, he told himself he was doing it to save Osha and Mae, but his actions really show that he was doing it more to prove the force vergence was real. While he tries to justify his actions as being to save Osha and Mae, and that he didn’t do anything wrong, it’s clear everything was really to satisfy his own ego. The fight scenes also continue to be excellent, the fight between Mae and Osha was really good, and I think it helps that because it’s an action sequence they’re allowed to use stunt doubles. I think the two best performances in the show were Sol and Qimir. Lee Jung-jae and Manny Jacinto are fantastic throughout and give incredibly nuanced performances and they’re the glue that helps keep the show together. After finishing the show I feel like the story, despite being hampered by pacing issues and some weak performances, ended up being pretty good and satisfying. Also, I think that The Acolyte should’ve been a movie instead of a series, but if it had to have been a series I don’t think it shouldn’t have been an 8 episode series but a 6 episode series. If I had to restructure the show I would’ve combined episodes 3 and 7 into one long flashback episode, and I’d combine episodes 4 and 5 into one episode as well. Episodes 1 and 2 would be the same episode 3 would be the combined episodes 4 and 5 Day/Night, episode 4 would be the full flashback episode Destiny/Choice and then episodes 5 and 6 would be the original episodes 6 and 8. I’ll probably make another post once I finish a rewatch but I did enjoy my time with The Acolyte and I’m looking forward to the various fan edits that will inevitably come out as I really feel condensing it down into a movie will do wonders for the story.