Done with its sequel era, “Star Wars” now goes back into the past, into the High Republic era, with “The Acolyte.”
Set about 100 years before the events of “Episode 1 — The Phantom Menace,” we get to see the peak of the Jedi, though some of the fatal flaws in their institution that eventually toppled it still shine through.
A young ex-Padawan and mektek named Osha (Amandla Stenberg) serves as our point-of-view character, as she is dragged into a murder mystery in which she is initially mistaken for her twin sister, Mae (also played by Stenberg), whom she mistakenly thought perished with their parents years ago.
In the show’s first two episodes, Osha’s only character flaw seems to be her incompetence with the Force and failure to detect the bad intentions of others. She has faith in others to a fault.
Mae, however, I’m unsure of. She allegedly is responsible for the fire that killed her parents, yet she is determined to track down and kill the four Jedi who were stationed nearby at the time, who saved Osha. We see Mae’s master — a likely unknown Sith lord — but we don’t fully know his intentions or his relationship with Mae. Yet Mae is not an inherently amoral person, as is evident by how she treats those she trusts, like Qimir (Manny Jacinto), who supplies her with weapons.
Osha has an interesting dynamic with her former master, Sol (Lee Jung-jae), who is assigned early on to bring her into custody after she is falsely accused of killing a Jedi. I was dreading having to sit through another Jedi trial like that of Ahsoka Tano in “The Clone Wars,” but thankfully, Osha is cleared once Mae kills another Jedi while she is in custody.
The other Jedi that accompany them are terrible. There’s Yord (Charlie Barnett), a young knight who was Osha’s peer and personifies pride, and Jecki Lon (Dafne Keen), Sol’s new apprentice who is a know-it-all to a fault. Maybe they’ll grow and change, or they’ll end up as cannon fodder for Mae.
Sol has shades of Qui-Gon Jinn, who believed that Jedi were supposed to love and form attachments. He clearly is still close to Osha, treating her like a daughter. I suspect that Osha will eventually earn her place back into the Jedi Order.
This show took me back to the “Jedi Apprentice” and “Jedi Quest” books that told the stories of young Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker respectively, with “Apprentice” taking place before “Episode I” and “Quest” after it, but before “Episode II — Attack of the Clones,” when the Clone Wars started.
They documented more peaceful times, when the Jedi served as peacekeepers most often in the form of Force sensitive detectives. It’s different from any other era of “Star Wars,” one that was unfortunately rejected with the dismal critical reception of Episodes I and II.
So far, I dig this. I haven’t seem a lot of enthusiasm for this show, but if it continues to be of quality, it’ll find its audience like “Andor.”
“Star Wars: The Acolyte” Episodes 1 and 2 gets a 7.5/10
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