With the insane variety of articles releasing where some say The Acolyte is one of the most successful launches of a show ever for Star Wars, and others saying it’s at the bottom of the barrel, I wanted to wait for the Nielsen Data to come out before analyzing the show’s public performance. Well, the premiere numbers are out, and they’re not great… According to Nielsen’s analytics for the debut week, The Acolyte garnered approximately 488 million viewing minutes across its two-episode debut, averaging ~244 million minutes/episode (in reality, the first episode always has higher numbers than the second, so probably more like 280 million episode 1, 208 million episode 2).
The Mandalorian Season 1: Data Not Available
The Mandalorian Season 2: One episode, 1.032 billion
The Book of Boba Fett: One episode, 389 million
Obi-Wan Kenobi: Two episodes, 1.026 billion total, 513 million average
Andor: Three episodes, 624 million total, 208 million average
The Mandalorian Season 3: One episode, 823 million
Ahsoka: Two episodes, 829 million total, 414.5 million average
The Acolyte: Two episodes, 488 million total, 244 million average
The series launch is most comparable to Andor, which ended up actually improving its watch time as the season advanced due to very positive critical reviews and generally good word of mouth/social media commentary (even in light of the claims of it being “slow/boring”). So it will be interesting to watch week by week as the Nielson numbers reveal if this show had a similar pattern to Andor, or if the generally negative word-of-mouth/social media commentary and mediocre critical reviews will cause viewership to dwindle.
Either way, it’s difficult to see a world in which Disney Executives see the show as a financial success. Unless the viewing numbers skyrocket toward the end (and I don’t find that very probable), the show failed to produce high viewing numbers, good reviews, or positive public perception of the brand. Whether you personally like it or not is irrelevant to the point I’m making here, I am simply trying to view it from an investor standpoint, and from the premiere alone, it’s immediately looking like the high marketing budget did not payoff as desired and a Season 2 wouldn’t be worth the money.
The Acolyte - Episode 7
Pacing and Structure
Without the intro and credits, we received 36 minutes and 10 seconds of content this week. I also have to note, that about 10% of this episode was actually identical or nearly identical scenes from Episode 3. I tried counting up the non-unique minutes of content. It depends on how nitpicky you want to get with what counts as a repeated scene (does an angle of Sol watching Mae and Osha sing their song for 30 seconds count as new content when we’ve already seen the entire song up close?). Still, there are about 3-4 minutes of scenes that are not providing any new context whatsoever, even showing the exact same camera angles and going word for word through the same events. So with only ~33 minutes of genuinely new scenes, as with previous episodes, I ended up feeling like the overall plot was moving way too fast, the character decision-making process was far too rushed, but many scenes still ended up feeling way too slow. This was no doubt an extremely difficult episode to pace well, how do you show the same 40 minutes of events from a different perspective in an engaging way? I can say that what we ended up receiving as the attempt didn’t do it for me and the show continued its battle with itself on how to pace the plot flow in the timeline.
When analyzing the structure of this episode, I want to focus on its placement in the series as a whole as well as an individual piece. This was finally the big reveal episode. This was the one that contained information intentionally withheld from us for 6 weeks now, it was to serve as the story for finally letting us know what happened that fateful night 16 years ago, or at least, let us know what happened from Sol’s perspective or point of view. During the last 6 episodes, Sol has constantly alluded to something bad that happened. He has insinuated that it was kind of his fault, or at least needed a bit of explaining and revealing of the truth. However, this episode wasn’t structured to present the story from Sol’s perspective as he told Mae of his recollection; this was mainly a story of the Jedi perspective on the whole, especially from Tobrin’s perspective.
So rather than as a story from Sol to Mae, this episode served as a story of Leslye to us as the audience. This was written to explain the “opposite” point of view from the third episode, which gave us the perspective or point of view of the twins and the witches. And so now together we have the whole picture. We know the full story of that night, and without a doubt, I think these two episodes should have been combined into one episode that started out the season. Because these “big” revelations felt not terribly interesting, and certainly not worth the 6-week wait with all the teasing. This storyline was potentially a good start to a story but it was not a good culmination to a mystery that is revealed in the penultimate episode of a season. I simply don’t feel happy about sitting through six episodes to get this one. I would have been much happier starting the season off with some combined 60-minute intro of these scenes spliced together. That could have served as the basis for a story to come about how one girl becomes or tries to become, a Jedi after a horrible and confusing event. The other twin, thought to be dead by the Jedi, is of course found and saved by a dark sider, by a Sith, and she becomes his acolyte or apprentice. And eventually, there is this confrontation between the sisters where they both try to save each other from the opposite point of view. One tries to save her sister from the Sith, the other tries to save her sister from the Jedi. That sounds quite interesting; still not as interesting as the marketed story of a pre-TPM story about a Sith Acolyte, but I digress!
Basically, I think a better structure for this entire storyline would be to ditch the whole mystery idea. The whole Rashoman approach did not do anything beneficial for the plot and that whole attempted aspect completely fell flat. I don’t feel like the previous episodes built up to this in a way where I wanted or even needed to spend 36 more minutes here so I could know what happened that night. I don’t think there was anything shocking about how any of the events played out. I watched it and simply thought, well yeah, that is pretty much how I thought it would have gone down. It was all a big misunderstanding more or less, there was no major twist or reveal of a mystery of any kind. I MUCH would have rather had another 40 minutes of present-day plot development to have a shot at a satisfying conclusion, maybe just show Sol simply explaining in a few minutes what he did wrong from his perspective. We still haven’t seen the space dogfight/chase through the asteroid field, Leslye has said there is another lightsaber duel, so it seems like Episode 8 is going to be light on the plot and I struggle to see a satisfying potential ending.
Dialogue and Writing Quality
The dialogue was back on par with episode 3, still being a weak point in the show. This show has a routine and constant issue with characters disagreeing with an idea or solution to a situation, and then with one additional exchange of dialogue, they immediately change their minds, sometimes after one single sentence without any additional consideration or counterpoints. When I say the episodes feel “rushed”, this reason is a primary offender. The characters do not deliver lines that seem to come from genuine thoughts, they deliver lines that are intended to move the plot to the next scene. Ie from this episode: Indara says she needs to go into the coven alone because of the danger, Sol says “There are 50 of them”, Indara says “50 women and 2 children,” Sol says, “We should go as a group,” then Indara instantly says “Fine,” and they all immediately walk in together. Why even write this disagreement? What is the purpose of this exchange? The ENTIRE disagreement lasted a whopping 14 seconds, never to be referenced again. This is what I mean when I say it doesn’t feel like the characters are voicing actual real-life thoughts, they are just saying words from a page to move from room to room. And I have to mention the stand-out line, “Go, girl. Get mad.” Ahh, it’s just not good dialogue in any sense. Some of it is still serviceable and it’s not always actively bad, but I’d be consistently giving this section a 4/10 each week.
This episode had to carry a LOT of narrative weight. One of the biggest questions I’ve had in the show is why Torbin would feel so much guilt to take a Barash vow for 10 years only to ultimately kill himself. Why did his conscience so burden Sol that he felt such a moral responsibility for what happened? Why did Kelnacca essentially leave the Jedi Order to become a hermit? So let’s tackle the answers here. For Torbin, I still don’t know what precisely he feels guilt for. Sol’s is a bit more apparent with how he chose to drop Mae instead of Osha, but Torbin…? Was it because he feels like he is responsible for all the witches being killed even though the Mother actively used the Dark Side/magik to mind control and torment him? She got inside his mind and started to egg on his thoughts about… wanting to go “home” to Coruscant? Somehow this additional mental seeding of his boredom/worries caused him to act beyond irrationally. In an effort to get the Jedi Order to allow the four of them to complete the mission of investigating plants on Brendock, Torbin decides to go and abduct the twins because this proof of a vergence in the Force “is our ticket home”, but he already had blood sample proof of their unique connection to the force. Why was that report not proof enough? What would kidnapping the girls and bringing them to Coruscant accomplish? How did he think that would go down when reporting to the Council who just told him not to intervene at all…? I just cannot possibly understand what was happening here. I want to be gracious and go with the theory that his judgment is still very clouded by lingering effects of the mind control, but in the very next scene, he is shown to have “fortified” his mind and can no longer be attacked in this manner. So he rushes back to the coven, and Sol chases him, but upon arriving, Sol doesn’t convince him to leave, they just walk in together to get the kids. Witches and Mae end up dying in the ensuing combat, Torbin gets wounded, and Osha is saved. So what exactly is burdening Torbin so much that for the next 16 years? I can understand being traumatized and needing some counseling or something, but the timeline the show presented was that for the next 5 years following the event, Torbin graduates as a Padawan, becomes a Knight, BECOMES A MASTER, then takes the Barash Vow and remains in a meditative state for “over ten years”. Folks, Torbin had this big smudge on his record, recovered enough from the trauma to become a Knight and then a Master at what, 24-ish years old? That is extremely rare and would indicate that he is some sort of force prodigy, and you just don’t get that vibe AT ALL from the show. I’m sorry, but this sequence of events is kind of beyond explanation. It is very, very low-quality writing. Just to finalize this and break it down easily, please examine the story of Torbin’s character and tell me if this is acceptable:
Torbin was extremely “bored” after 7 weeks of collecting plants and wanted to go home badly. Torbin’s master confronts some witches and he is mind-controlled in a sense and the witch plays on his desire to leave. At this point, he is likely scared and bored and just wants to leave the planet. He finds out the Twins are special, ignores his master’s commands, and flies off alone to fight the entire coven himself and kidnap two kids. Sol arrives, goes in together, battles witches, fights Kelnacca, and is injured and traumatized. He goes back to Coruscant, heals (what happened to bacta tanks…? Luke did not remain so scarred and mutilated from the Wampa), continues training for a few more years, becomes a Knight, very quickly becomes a Master in his mid-twenties, then still so burdened by the night, he takes that Barash Vow and enters a complete trance for over ten years, awakes and sees Mae, instantly kills himself with poison. It’s just… No. Not possible.
I could write equally in-depth about Sol’s guilt, but it’s more of the same. At least he has the added pain of choosing to save Osha instead of Mae, but I don’t think he was in the wrong whatsoever to stab the Mother. She starts using magik to transform into a demon and “Osha” starts dissolving into thin air as he has a ton of guns pointed at his head. What the hell was he supposed to think? The Mother says she was just going to let Osha leave, but… Osha wasn’t even there? Why would she not just calmly agree to tell Sol this instead of turning into a demon-like figure? And when Sol goes to save Osha/Mae, he chooses to try to lift enormous collapsing metal bridges instead of just lifting two 40 lb girls off the bridges…? Just a lot of events that make little sense. Kelnacca’s only guilt was getting mind controlled and injuring Torbin I guess, and I’m not sure how that leads to 15+ years of solitude and depression.
Aside from the nonsensical character motivations, I was really expecting some sabotage on the reactor for the fire burning down a massive complex in mere minutes. Showing the book fire touching some wires and sparking is truly horrendous justification for an entire mountain complex collapsing to the ground. I thought we’d see some Sith involvement here, much greater Jedi guiltiness, reason for the fire, explanations of the conception, etc. I will reserve some judgment for next week in case Qimir reveals anything new, but I didn’t get the sense that we weren’t told everything.
Production Quality and Creative Direction
Not a lot of new sets here. We see a nighttime Jedi camp, a little on the exterior of the facility, and more of the courtyard. So there really isn’t much new to analyze here. All the same characters, costumes, and sets for the most part. The CGI looked absolutely terrible on the speeder scenes which were each only about 5 seconds a piece of an actor wiggling awkwardly in front of a poorly meshed green screen. There was no sense of scale whatsoever between the camp, the travel, the surrounding forest, or the facility itself. The practical effects and VFX continue to look great whenever actual battles are occurring, but the surrounding scale and depth of production look very shallow. Case in point, when the complex starts exploding for some reason, we see one single exterior shot of an explosion, then we cut back to the courtyard and there is debris everywhere. The whole setting changed, but they didn’t bother to show it collapsing indoors. I can’t blame the lack of budget here. A lot of sets felt extremely small and cheap in this episode. Also, we have some extremely obvious Automated Dialogue Replacement occurring on the opening camp scene that points to heavy reshoots/recontextualization. There really wasn’t an A/B plotline to balance this time around, so the transitions between scenes felt much improved from previous weeks. I wouldn’t say they were great, but definitely not nearly as distracting as they have been.
Not a lot of new creative direction here either. There were no new creatures or worldbuilding, no new ships aside from the speeders. I did like the designs of those quite a bit, but their CGI looks so blurry and out of place… It looks like the ship in orbit of the planet a couple of weeks ago, the one that looked like a PS2 render. The combat still is above average for the Disney productions and I was pleased watching the Kelnacca battle. He looked a bit stiff in the costume, but the acrobatics surrounding it helped a lot. I don’t think they fully portrayed Wookiee’s strength very well here though, he seemed to be physically subdued a bit too easily. Especially with Torbin’s backhand blocking and holding a full power kill swing… but it wasn’t a bad fight. No clue what they were going for with having all the other witches die when Indara “disconnected” Kelnacca. That just came off as a “Wtf, why did they all die” moment rather than a satisfying payoff. All in all, it was a rather “safe” and small-scale episode that didn’t introduce many new elements of creativity.
I do need to at least make a small mention of the end credits music… That was… a first for Star Wars. Modern pop music doesn’t really bring me into feeling like this is the Star Wars that I know and love. I like telling new stories in universe, but you have to make it feel in universe. Making people think directly of earth and 2024 culture is very strange directing. I am not at all a fan of that trend and hope it quickly dies right here.
Performances and Characters
As expected, Sol was the standout performance once more. Even through some somewhat confusing motivations like an inexplicable draw to Osha, he delivers his desires in a very believable manner. His performance as he held up the bridges was great as well, showing his depth of ability in portraying feelings like stress, worry, and love. I thought Dean-Charles Chapman gave off a pretty solid performance of a padawan as well. He is 26 in real life, but in the show appeared more to be 18-20 and I thought he gave a good effort at this role. “Trinity” just doesn’t have a character she can work with, there was really no personality to display and it feels like a bit of a waste and that almost anyone could’ve played Indara. Aniseya does a solid job at delivering her voodoo-inspired character, but Korril comes off as very forced and the anger her character has isn’t being adequately communicated in her emotional range.
Torbin - A complete failure of a character in my opinion. I cannot begin to understand his decision-making as a padawan, how he excelled so quickly as a Jedi after the events of the flashback to become a master, and why he decided to take the vow and kill himself. Truly a mess of writing here.
Sol - I don’t entirely buy the weight of his guilt after seeing this. I can understand some pain toward Mae because he dropped her, but his main flaw was his attachment to Osha, and I thought he’d been talking to Osha like he earned her scorn for something he had done. I guess that was in reference to not saving Mae? Just not too sure where he is coming from with all of this, and while he started out as a great character in Episode 1/2, I can’t say he has stayed as one due to the confusing motivations. Still above average, but it seemed like he had a lot more potential for a huge character arc than what we got. Next week could elevate him quite a bit though depending on how things conclude.
Kelnacca - This really isn’t a character beyond someone in the background. Like, try to explain his personality to me. He had no development as a person whatsoever. Disappointing as the concept of a Wookiee Jedi is awesome, wish he would’ve been in the spotlight more.
Indara - Extremely boring Jedi portrayal, no-nonsense but also no personality. Not much to say in terms of character arc or growth. She goes by the books and dies in under 20 minutes of screen time throughout the whole season.
Conclusion
I held back a handful of criticism of Episode 3 because I expected satisfying payoffs to all of the mysteries, but the payoffs were overwhelmingly disappointing. This would be my least favorite episode of the season, and while individually maybe not as poor as Episode 3, its placement as the penultimate episode of the series is disastrous for the overall pacing of the show and the potential to conclude well.
Rating: 1.9/10 (I’d call it “terrible”, but not “unwatchable” or “pretty weak”)
Pros:
Continued good choreography in combat
Some actors do well in displaying believable emotional performances
Lightsaber stabs continuing to kill people 😃
Cons:
Extremely disappointing and unsatisfying payoffs to mysteries
Character motivations and arcs that are inexplicable
Repeated scenes and poor placement of episode deflate the conclusion
Best scenes:
- Kelnacca v Sol/Torbin battle
- Both sequences in the courtyard did well with tension-building
- Aside from the “metal detectors” I liked seeing the Jedi in the opening on a “boring” mission during the High Republic as without a Galactic threat, that’s the kind of tasks they had at times
Worst Scenes:
- Torbin gets bored and rushes away
- Mae’s fire burns down the complex by touching wires in a stone wall
- Every repeated scene from Episode 3 that did not add new content
