The Dark Herald Does Not Recommend: The Acolyte (Part I)
(I have to break this into two parts, I can’t examine this much bad in only 1500 words)
This is the LucasFilm project where the last of the superfans, The Star Wars Advocates finally walked away. The opposite of love is not hatred, it’s indifference. After this, they don’t care anymore. It’s not just that this show took Star Wars canon, rolled it up in a carpet, threw it in a dumpster, poured gasoline on it, and set it on fire. It’s that there was nothing in this show that indicated it was the product of Western or even human storytelling traditions. When I say that Alejandro Jodorwasky’s Holy Mountain had a more coherent character motivation, that is literally the truth.
The numbers are so low, for Star Wars: The Acolyte that they are in Willow territory. Disney’s fiscal year ends on September 30. If this show leaves Disney+ before then, it’s never coming back anywhere. This is the new champion, this is the show that defeated The Star Wars: The Holiday Special to gain the title, Worst Star Wars of All Time.
This. Series. Got. Every. Single. Thing. Wrong.
I’ll be examining this abomination from the ground up.
Characters: ‘A good character writes him or herself,’ is one of the basics of writing. When you have your teeth into a character you know what that character will do. So does the audience for the most part, Luke Skywalker will fly to Bespin to try and save his friends no matter the cost to himself, when we saw Empire we knew he would do that. Just as we knew, he absolutely would not murder his nephew because he had a bad dream. Luke is a good character (granted one that’s developing a major image problem courtesy of Mark Hamill).
The characters in The Acolyte aren’t even as good as cardboard cutouts, at least two-dimensional characters will work as cliches. This show couldn’t even manage that. The closest you could get to a consistent personal narrative was based not on that character’s actions but on where the character lands on the DEI matrix.
For instance, the twins Mae and Osha are completely justified in every evil act they do. This is a reflection of Hollywood’s situational “values” and the situations change constantly. Does my new boss need me to be a flag-waving Christian? Let’s go to a John Wayne film festival in Branson. Does my next boss advocate sex reassignment for three-year-olds? No one wants that more than me! The whole, “I will be whatever you want me to be.” mindset of Hollywood infected every aspect of this show. As I’ve said repeatedly, every Disney production produced today needs a morality coach.
However, this show is easily the worst of a bad lot because it’s trying to make a moral statement but clearly has no framework, other than DEI, on how to do that.
None of the characters have any character at all.
Leslye Headland had said, something about about it being like Kill Bill meets Breaking Bad. No, it isn’t. Breaking Bad was a story of one man’s road to damnation, every slightly bad decision Walter White made, led to a worse decision until there was nothing left but a monster. There was nothing like that kind of coherence in this series. The Acolyte’s story wasn’t the result of carefully cultivated character development, it was whipped and beaten into submission at every plot point. It arrived where Leslye Headland had determined it would go in spite of her characters’ actions, not because of them.
In theory, this was the story of how Osha, the former Jedi Padawan became a Sith Acolyte (it’s been done before in Star Wars Leslye) but it was really meant to show that the Jedi are no better than the Sith, if you really think about it.
In the first three episodes, we are presented with Osha’s view of the pivotal events that shaped her life. She and her twin were born into a coven of lesbian space witches. During the Ascension ceremony where the girls are to become lesbian space witches themselves, the Jedi show up and demand permission to test the girls. Osha for no reason whatsoever really, and truly, ‘can I please, please, please,’ wants to become a Jedi. Mae is all kinds of pissed because she wants them to both become lesbian space witches. She then accidentally tries to burn her sister alive and sets the stone temple on fire in the process. You are meant to sympathize with Mae.
A few episodes later we find out what really happened. The four Jedi that Mae was hunting earlier in the series were investigating Brendock (the lesbian witch planet) because it was made uninhabitable a century before. They think there is a vergence here. Then Sol spots the twins and things get super creepy.
He wants to protect them from the lesbian space witches. Okay, I do agree with him in principle here, but in the show, he came across as the kind of insane woman who kills a pregnant woman in the Walmart parking lot to steal her baby out of her.
The witches defend themselves by means of demonic possession, and the Jedi fight. When the possession is broken the witches all die for some fucking reason. The chief witch, the twin’s mother, (technically father since she was the one who put them in another woman rather than carry them herself), starts to turn herself into a cloud and streak toward Mae. Sol makes a judgment call and cuts the witch-mother down.
Given what he knew at the time, Sol was perfectly right to do what he did. But the audience is ordered to believe that this was a horrific crime. Why? Because he killed a black lesbian, in the LucasFilm writer’s group there is no greater crime that can be committed. These are minds that routinely convince themselves of things because they are required to believe them. George Floyd was a living saint and Kyle Rittenhouse is a drooling mass murderer because that’s what the meta is at this minute. Feelings dictate what the facts are.
Mae and Osha fall off a bridge and Sol can only save Osha. Turns out Mae got sucked into a plot contrivance pipe (I suppose the Empire Strikes Back does grandfather those in, so I’ll have to give it a reluctant pass).
Carrie-Anne Moss, the girl boss Jedi leader covers up the atrocity.
In the last scene of the series, Venestra the higher-ranking girl boss also covers up an atrocity.
A writer must write of that of which she knows. Isn’t that how it goes Leslye?
(End of Part I)
