The Acolyte Just Lost Its Secret Strength
There are only a few paths The Acolyte can take now.
The Acolyte saved some of its biggest moments for its Season 1 finale. The Disney+ series' eighth episode not only features the death of Jedi Master Sol (Lee Jung-jae) at the hands of his former padawan, Osha (Amandla Stenberg), but it also ends with Sol's colleague, Vernestra (Rebecca Henderson), pinning all of the deaths in The Acolyte's first season on him. In case that wasn't enough, the episode even sees Osha turn Sol's lightsaber red after making its kyber crystal bleed.
As major as all of those beats are, few moments in The Acolyte's eighth episode have been talked about as much as its two game-changing cameos. The first belongs to Darth Plagueis, the legendary Sith Lord who is seen watching as Osha and Qimir's (Manny Jacinto) ship flies away, while the second comes at the end of the episode when Vernestra seeks some wise advice from Jedi Master Yoda. Together, these two moments radically reset The Acolyte's established hierarchy of power.
They also rob the series of the one thing that made it special.
Darth Plagueis makes his live-action Star Wars debut in shocking fashion in The Acolyte’s Season 1 finale.
There has never been a Star Wars show or movie like The Acolyte before. Not only is it the first, truly Sith-focused piece of canonical visual media that we've gotten, but it's also set during a period (the end of the High Republic) that has never been explored before onscreen. Those two details allowed The Acolyte to easily slot itself into the Star Wars universe while introducing new characters and telling a story that felt like it uniquely belonged to it. There was a creative freedom pulsing throughout its first season that made the series feel, at times, revelatory.
By introducing both Yoda and Darth Plagueis, though, the series has unnecessarily limited itself. It is, of course, unclear whether or not Yoda is meant to become a major player in The Acolyte, but it's hard to think of any other reason for his cameo at the end of the show's Season 1 finale. The same goes for Darth Plagueis, a character whose role in the Star Wars universe's story and whose fate are so legendary that fans have been waiting years to see him appear in some form or another onscreen. Unfortunately, we know what happens to both Yoda and Plagueis. Even more importantly, we know that no conflict that may emerge between Qimir (Manny Jacinto), Osha, and Plagueis will go well for the former two characters.
We know that Plagueis lives long enough to train Darth Sidious and that he's killed by Palpatine sometime before the events of The Phantom Menace. Regardless of whether he's Qimir's secretly still-alive Sith Master or simply a more powerful foe that neither Qimir nor Osha is aware of, our knowledge of what happens to him inherently limits what The Acolyte can do with its two central characters. They can't beat Plagueis, so any conflict that arises between the three of them is already tainted by our awareness that Osha and Qimir are fated to fail.
That's a fact The Acolyte creator Leslye Headland has already alluded to in an interview with IndieWire, telling the outlet, "Even though [Osha and The Stranger] are standing there, sort of looking out at the sunset, ready to conquer the world, the tragedy is we know they don’t. We know there can only be two. We know Plagueis is there. We know that these two are doomed in some way."
In its Season 1 finale, The Acolyte introduces two characters whose Star Wars legacies seem too big for it to handle.
The best thing about The Acolyte when it premiered was how new it felt. It was the first Star Wars title in a long time that didn't feel weighed down by canonical demands or suffocatingly limited by its place within its franchise's fictional timeline. Plagueis and Yoda's introductions have, however, taken that aspect away from the series.
We now know that there are only a few directions Osha and Qimir's story can go — should The Acolyte be renewed for another season. That doesn't mean the series couldn’t ever find a way to surprise viewers again. It has fewer opportunities to do so moving forward, though, and that's a shame, especially considering that The Acolyte really didn't need to introduce characters as overwhelmingly powerful as Plagueis and Yoda yet.
