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[COLUMN] The Acolyte is a Study of Star Wars' Dueling Dualities | by Darren Mooney
🕑 Added 2024-12-02 15:00:17 +0000 UTC
Note: With Skeleton Crew premiering today, it seemed like a good opportunity to look back at The Acolyte. Note that this piece contains major spoilers for the show, which watches much better as a binge than it does weekly. Which maybe explains why it took me so long to return to it.
“Always two there are, no more, no less,” explains Master Yoda (Frank Oz) of the Sith in The Phantom Menace. “A master and an apprentice.”
Yoda is outlining the piece of Star Wars lore known as “the Rule of Two”, as it applies directly to the Sith. It also more broadly describes the larger philosophy of Star Wars, a franchise largely built around dichotomies: master or apprentice, Jedi or Sith, rebel or imperial, light or dark, good or evil. There are exceptions; many of the best characters in the franchise – such as Lando Calrissian (Billy Dee Williams) – challenge such neat delineations. However, this is part of the structure of Star Wars.
Leslye Headland’s The Acolyte is very strongly engaged with this idea of duality. It is built into the show’s foundation. The Acolyte is a story about two twins: Osha and Mae (both played by Amandla Stenberg). Many of the individual episodes are titled with opposing-but-related concepts: the first is “Lost / Found”, the second is “Revenge / Justice” and the sixth is “Teach / Corrupt.” However, the convention extends beyond individual episodes. Four of the remaining five episodes are literally twinned. (The season finale is simply “The Acolyte”, twinning the show’s title.)
The eight-episode season is neatly bisected by the fourth episode “Day” and the fifth episode “Night.” Even beyond the mirrored titles, these episodes are clearly intended to be seen as interlinked. Both are directed by Alex Garcia Lopez and credit Kor Adana as a writer. Similarly, the third episode “Destiny” is obviously twinned with the penultimate episode, “Choice.” Both are directed by video essayist and filmmaker Kogonada and share a writing credit from Jasmyne Flournoy.
These two sets of twinned episodes are clearly designed to be of a piece with one another. “Day” and “Night” follow a doomed Jedi excursion to the remote planet Khofar, with the bulk of “Night” given over to the disastrous ambush and battle that ensues between the team and a Sith known only as “the Stranger” (Manny Jacinto). Even in a highly-serialized season that could be described as “an eight-episode movie”, these two middle episodes are clearly a mid-season two-parter.
In contrast, “Destiny” and “Choice” are separated across the season, although they are clearly positioned to echo one another. Because the season premiered with the simultaneous release of both “Lost / Found” and “Revenge / Justice”, “Destiny” was the second block of The Acolyte to be released. “Choice” was then the second-to-last episode of The Acolyte to be released, which gives the season an interesting structure in a medium that can often feel like amorphous “content soup.”
“Destiny” and “Choice” are both flashback episodes. They both portray the same event – the separation of Osha and Mae – from two very different perspectives. In this sense, they feel of a piece with the various flashbacks of the key confrontation between Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) and Ben Solo (Adam Driver) in The Last Jedi. They are both obvious invocations of Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon, a clever acknowledgment of Kurosawa's influence on George Lucas’ Star Wars.
More than that, these conflicting flashbacks tie into one of the core themes of the larger Star Wars canon. In Return of the Jedi, Luke confronts his own master, Obi-Wan Kenobi (Alec Guinness), after discovering that Darth Vader (David Prowse, James Earl Jones) is really his father. Obi-Wan had previously told Luke that his father died during the Clone Wars, and Luke feels justifiably betrayed that this secret was kept from him. “Why didn't you tell me?” Luke demands.
Obi-Wan argues that Luke’s father has become so warped by hate that he is functionally a different person. “So, what I told you was true,” Obi-Wan doubles down, “from a certain point of view.” In one of the more interesting and mature ideas articulated in Return of the Jedi, Obi-Wan explains the concept of relativism to Luke, rejecting the binary of “true” and “false”, explaining, “Luke, you're going to find that many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view.”
This idea is literally woven into the fabric of The Acolyte. Osha and Mae were conceived and raised by a coven of witches led by Mother Aniseya (Jodie Turner-Smith) on Brendok. The witches worship the Force, the same abstract construct as the Jedi. However, they describe it as “the Thread” and do not divide it into “light” and “dark.” Despite some fan outrage, The Acolyte never argues that the witches are right and the Jedi are wrong. Instead, The Acolyte suggests that they are each a blind man describing an elephant.
It is worth pausing to acknowledge that The Acolyte works much better taken as a whole than it does as a collection of individual episodes. That two-episode season premiere does not feel that much different from the season premieres of The Book of Boba Fett or Obi-Wan Kenobi or Ahsoka. The Acolyte only really distinguishes itself from the other (non-Andor) Star Wars streaming shows when viewed as a complete object.
(Although I don’t like talking in the first person in these pieces, I’ll acknowledge: I was lukewarm on the two episodes that were previewed to press for the purpose of reviewing the show, and so it took me quite a while to circle back around to watch the rest of show – particularly given the tendency of streaming franchise shows to implode as they reach an ending. Had the whole season been provided for review, as The Penguin or The Last of Us were, I would have been much more enthusiastic. It was impossible to see what Headland was doing based on the press material provided.)
Headland attracted a certain amount of ire from traditionalist Star Wars fans for some of her creative choices. Setting aside the racist and misogynist criticisms acknowledged by actors like Stenberg and Turner-Smith, it’s strange to argue that The Acolyte was particularly transgressive or subversive. It is clearly extrapolated from the core themes of the larger Star Wars franchise, that memetic conversation between Luke and Obi-Wan and what Lucas himself attempted with the prequels.
Indeed, The Acolyte is part of a larger nostalgic invocation of the prequels, an attempt to engage with the legacy of those three movies and expand the franchise’s nostalgia beyond the original trilogy. Indeed, as the show progresses, the parallels become much more apparent. In particular, the character of Jedi Master Sol (Lee Jung-jae) is very clearly designed to evoke Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn (Liam Neeson) from The Phantom Menace: the wiser older guy who looks like he should be the hero of this story but really isn’t.
The story of Osha and Mae is very clearly meant to call to mind the tale of Anakin Skywalker (Jake Lloyd, Hayden Christensen), the boy who would become Darth Vader. Like Anakin, Osha and Mae are conceived by way of an immaculate conception. Like Anakin, Osha and Mae are extremely sensitive to the Force, possessing very high “m-counts.” Like Anakin, Osha and Mae are taken from their backwater world and separated from their mothers by a Jedi who is against the advice of the Jedi Council who believe they are too old to train.
The Phantom Menace is a mess of a film and none of its thematic points cohere as clearly as they should. However, there is something compelling in its central tragedy. Qui-Gon Jinn is recognizable as the archetype who should be the hero of this sort of narrative, an unconventional-but-authoritative rogue who makes reckless decisions for what he believes to be the greater good. However, the twist is that those choices have shocking and disastrous consequences despite – or perhaps because of – the moral certainty he felt in making them.
The prequels are a grand tragedy about the hubris of the Jedi. They are a deconstruction of the mythology of the Jedi and the Republic, a rejection of the sort of nostalgia that paints such figures as heroes and legends. Released against the backdrop of the War on Terror and the march to the War in Iraq, Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith were stories about the collapse of a society that was so certain of its righteousness that it never questioned its decisions. Revenge of the Sith even prompted a right-wing outrage campaign.
Lucas insists Star Wars was explicitly about Vietnam, but admitted the prequels had a timely resonance. “When I wrote Star Wars, Iraq didn’t exist,” Lucas explained at Cannes in 2005. However, he added, “The parallels between Vietnam and what we’re doing in Iraq now are unbelievable. I didn’t think it was going to get quite this close - I hope this doesn’t become true in our country. Maybe the film will wake people to see how easily a democracy can be subverted.” As many observers covering Revenge of the Sith pointed out, George W. Bush framed the world in his own dichotomy: “Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.”
The Acolyte takes Lucas’ ideas and renders them more coherently. Sol acts in a manner similar to Qui-Gon Jinn, but the narrative makes his hubris clearer. Qui-Gon Jinn dies at the end of The Phantom Menace, before he can be confronted by the result of his choice to separate Anakin from his mother (Pernilla August). In contrast, much of The Acolyte is about Sol dealing with the consequences of his actions on Brendok, confronting his own responsibility for everything that followed.
More than that, for the first time in live action Star Wars, a Sith is allowed to articulate an argument for the validity of their own existence. Asked what he wants, the Stranger replies, “Freedom. The freedom to wield my power the way I like – without having to answer to Jedi like you.” Explaining why he has to resort to violence, he states, “I don’t make the rules. The Jedi do. And the Jedi say I can’t exist. They see my face, they all die.” That is the most simple binary of all: us or them.
The Stranger is forced into this position – forced to kill or be killed – by the rigid dichotomy of the Jedi worldview. This is hardly the moral complexity and sophistication of Andor, but it is an attempt to engage with the ideas that Lucas injected into Star Wars towards the end of his tenure. In Revenge of the Sith, Obi-Wan (Ewan McGregor) warns Anakin that “only a Sith deals in absolutes”, but it’s the moral order that the Jedi impose upon the universe that creates such absolutes in the first place.
In The Last Jedi, Luke Skywalker tasks his young student Rey (Daisy Ridley) with connecting with the Force. He asks her what she feels. “Life,” she begins. She then continues, “Death and decay, that feeds new life. Warmth. Cold. Peace. Violence.” Luke presses her, “And between it all?” Rey answers, “Balance.” This is a holistic view of the Force, one that rejects simple binaries by understanding the universe as a tapestry of interconnected ideas rather than a contest between polar opposites.
At its best, The Acolyte captures the way in which this delineation of the universe into contrasting and antagonistic sides inevitably leads to tragedy. This is the story of Osha and Mae, who are repeatedly described as “always one, but born as two.” The Acolyte suggests that the twins are a single soul torn in half, inevitably pulled asunder by a universe that is hostile to anything that exists outside a neatly defined binary.
It feels fitting that The Acolyte closes with a shot of Yoda. He was correct. In the world of Star Wars, as defined by the Jedi, there are always two. However, when those twin forces are defined in opposition to one another, The Acolyte suggests that balance is impossible.
Comments
JR
Good points! For movies and similar media it's interesting though that there is a huge difference between a retelling and a rescreening. George Lucas shenanigans aside, watching the original (3/6/9/...) Star Wars movies - e.g. between parents and kids - will not adapt their very content to modern contexts. At best, the viewing experience opens a new discussion about them. Games are hardly preserved anyway and books are comparatively easy to rewrite in the most problematic parts (or - less controversially - translate to a more modern language), so movies etc. are in an interesting way nailed to their spot. And to your last point: I would go so far as to say that you aren't a lost cause if, even as an adult, you enjoy a children's story with a simplistic worldview. You may even learn from it - it maybe just shouldn't be the lesson that this is how the world is or should be again.
Grey1
The biggest praise I have for The Acolyte is that it never felt like boring homework/appointment viewing to me. And not even because it turned into an absurdly mindless funtime hour ("Okay, we're all just here for the silliness, now give me my piece of Boba"). If we take in The Bad Batch, I must say that this had the biggest feels-like-homework effect on me. Which is interesting, because you'd guess that an animated show would naturally aim for a younger audience and therefore be much more engaging and, well, fun. Makes me wonder if the TCW-style shows will now all move to Live Action because they're basically nostalgia for those who were kids around 2010... or are old enough to have read Heir To The Empire when it came out.
Grey1
Just to add a thought, there's currently lots of media about inspirational real people (especially regarding female role models for girls), which may obviously run into problems of their own once those real people are a bit more complicated than just their inspirational episode. And then there's always new fictional stories that inspire but do not have to be in conversation with the world as it was decades or centuries ago. So maybe Star Wars loses some of the relevance it might have had when it came out, as does The Phantom Menace, as will Skeleton Crew (which arguably builds on both Amblin era and Stranger Things era relevance). It's nice to be able to share the tales we once listened to, as if we were storytellers at campfires (yes, the "Star Wars" scene from Reign of Fire comes to mind). But I'd say storytellers probably always bend the stories to their context, to their own era, which runs counter to today's impulse to save everything for posterity, in mint condition. Unless you're a cover band, of course. Then it's your job to faithfully recreate the past. And to a certain degree I'd say that there's enough people who prove that you can change your point of view as you become older. Having a simplistic world view at age 6 doesn't mean you're a lost cause.
melchar
I've always had a problem with Yoda's 'there are always 2' statement. It's wrong. Palpatine has been grooming multiple apprentices. The apprentices are revealed one at a time, but they have always been there & Darth Maul is the newest of the lot. There are also Count Dooku/Darth Tyranus & General Grievous, plus others if you go the Expanded Universe route. Plus there's Yoda himself: a dogmatic gremlin who nearly shoves Anakin into the Dark Side's arms while making pronouncements that are blatantly wrong. 'Too young for training?' when the kid is barely a sprout. Yoda makes Anakin feel unwanted, undervalued - undermines his self-worth & accomplishments. Yoda senses the horrible suffering Anakin feels and does NOTHING to help or provide counseling. Yoda fetches the clones for the Republic's use & might as well be a Sith himself with how little he does to stop Palpatine. Then, once the Republic falls, Yoda goes to hide on a swamp planet teeming with life & the Dark Side. Like calling to like? Sus as heck is the little green guy.
Precious Roy
I wanted to like this show a lot more than I ended up doing, because it does contain all these interesting ideas. What killed it for me was the sometimes comical degree to which things happened because the story needed them to happen, not because a character made a choice based on their experience or belief and took an action that had consequences. I won't get into spoilers obviously, there were just several pivotal plot developments that left me staring at the TV asking "but why would you do that?"
Lil' Cass
"This is a holistic view of the Force, one that rejects simple binaries by understanding the universe as a tapestry of interconnected ideas rather than a contest between polar opposites." The video game Outer Wilds and its DLC also explores this too.
Lil' Cass
“Luke, you're going to find that many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view.” And sometimes we need to look beyond our own point of view to find out that the truths we held onto end up being false which means then we need to look beyond what we see and currently think to find better truths to hold onto, which can help us be and do better yes but if we don't keep ourselves in check it can also mean worse too. Essentially, we need good truths to hold onto to keep ourselves and our extremes in check, because if we don't then we will fall victim to our extremes and end up twisting and distorting good truths into ugly false lies and views.
JR
Thank you! You've convinced me even more that The Acolyte tells a valuable story, but what you describe still is a story about failure to effectively do good. A very important lesson, yet a different one. So is - in very broad strokes - a story about not doing the "bad thing" (revenge) you thought you wanted to do. The ending of "Better Call Saul" sounds really interesting. I didn't know the show was moving towards this kind of conclusion. Knowing this is something like an anti-spoiler for me, making it more interesting. So thank you for that! Also, it's a shame I don't know much about Andor, which everybody seems to agree is worth a watch. I will try to change that! Pending that, maybe what remains of my point is that telling a story about someone who tries to do good in the first place, has interesting struggles but manages in the end is not as often being done in interesting ways these days. Or maybe not and it's just that I myself find the stories being told in the way of a hero's journey nowadays a bit shallow, formulaic and all-in-all not very inspiring thus sorting them out myself. Maybe they are not as few and far between as they seem to me and I'm really just becoming disgruntled. ;) Thank you anyway for the discussion!
Darren Mooney
I don't know about the idea that this story lacks empathy for those trying to be good. As I replied in a comment below, I do feel a great pang of empathy for Sol, just as I did for Qui-Gon. This is a person doing what they believe to be right and in the best interests of the larger galaxy, convinced of their own moral certainty. And Sol, in particular, has to live with his failure and the consequences of his actions. I absolutely don't think he should be allowed to carry a lightsaber again, and I absolutely think he should come clean about what happened and faced the consequences, but I do feel some measure of pity and compassion for a man who got that far in over his head because he was so convinced that he knew what was right and has to live with that. And in terms of how to do better and how to do good, I think "Andor" is very much about the challenges of that in this day and age. (I do think it's also worth demonstrating that doing better and doing good is hard work, that it isn't easy. I loved the ending of "Better Call Saul" precisely because it found the lead character accepting responsibility for the things he had done and paying the cost, proving it's never too late to do the right thing - as long as you're willing to accept the price. It made a nice counterpoint to "Breaking Bad" in that respect.) And in terms of more broader stories of heroism, this year saw the release of "Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga", which is one of the most humanist blockbusters in recent memory, a story of a woman who learns that revenge is meaningless and that the only value to be found at the end of the world lies in helping others. (Which is, oddly enough, the moral of most "Mad Max" movies. The exception being the first.)
JR
Cynicism! That's the word I'm looking for. Critical reappraisal always fights complacency, yes, but you still need an idea for where to go from there, how to do it better, how to be good to not eventually become a cynic. And that's what I, personally, miss in media these days.
JR
And I agree with that. I just think there should be a bit of both, critical and aspirational storytelling. I'm feeling a bit lost for characters to look up to in recent media (maybe I'm just partially blind there?) and oversaturated with deconstructed heroes, antiheroes and relatable bad guys. I strongly agree with the political take (and could name parallels in Europe). At the same time I hold up that discourse (political and other) is also healthier if in every apparently well-meaning action and actor we don't just see a sort of bad guy yet to be revealed. Media seems to be priming us for empathy for the suppressed, the failed etc. -and that's good! -, but maybe not enough for empathy with those trying (and struggling) to be good and helpful.
Darren Mooney
I think it being a “Star Wars” story is important. I don’t know, personally. I think it’s important to be able to have a conversation with children about how institutions can represent ideals that they fail to uphold. I’m wary of being too overt about politics, particularly as a non-American, but I do think America would be a lot healthier if its national myth wasn’t built on divine exceptionalism. If it was possible to talk about the nation’s previous failures to live up to its ideals without provoking a strange denialism.
Darren Mooney
I always found it interesting that the Jedi, who see themselves defined in opposition to the near-extinct Sith, would want “balance.” (I know Lucas has dismissed this reading, but I found the irony always quite compelling. Anakin did create a universe - expanded universe excepted - where there were only two Jedi (Yoda and Obi-Wan, then Yoda and Luke, then Luke and Leia) at any given moment to match the two Sith.)
Justin Buergi
I've genuinely never watched a Star Wars show or movie, but I've always loved listening to lore dives about them on YouTube, and the whole "balance of the force" thing always kinda felt like BS to me. The Jedi say they want balance but that just means a scale pressed all the way down on one side. I don't even think the force liked the Jedi and wouldn't be surprised if the force created Anakin to clear the board and rebalance the scales Though I also think Jar Jar was originally supposed to be a Sith so what do I know? lol
JR
Still: I miss being able to like and look up to the Jedis as heroes when I was young. And no, it's not just that I've grown more mature, it's also the stories that have changed, isn't it? I'm far from being reactionarily nostalgic - by all means this sounds like a more interesting and overall more "valuable" story than much of the original Star Wars trilogy - but I do wonder what stories I will show to my children early in their lives one day, after seemingly all our aspirational tales (will) have been morally reversed. But yeah, wouldn't it have been a Star Wars story (thereby "(further) ruining it", as would be fans' emotional shorthand for what I said) but a standalone series, it might not have been made, wouldn't gain as much attention and be understandable without much of an introduction, I know...
Darren Mooney
I’d put it about on par with the final season of “The Clone Wars”, with lower highs (not as good as the opening or closing arcs) and higher lowers (never as dull as the “Bad Batch” stealthy pilot). I think it’s better than “The Bad Batch” taking as a whole and the other projects - “Visions” and “Tales” - are too wildly variable in quality for me to really do a like-for-like comparison.
DarthSatoris
Where would you put it if we added in the animated shows?
Darren Mooney
Glad to be of use!
Harley Faggetter
I was so hoping for someone who knew movies better than me to write a piece like this. I agree that it probably does work better as a binge, but even a few episodes in (maybe the 4th or 5th?) it was clear this was oozing with references and callbacks to Lucas's Star Wars
Darren Mooney
Thank you for this.
Darren Mooney
Ah yeah. It’s no “Andor”, but handily the best of the remaining crop of live action shows.
Darren Mooney
I actually really appreciated the perspective shift on Sol. I thought he was pretty generic in the first batch of episodes - the comparison to Qui-Gon was clear from the start, but I wasn’t entirely sure the show would commit and follow through. (One of my pet issues is the way Disney “Star Wars” walks up to, but won’t say, “midichlorian.” It’s now “m-count”, which is just weird. Either ignore the concept or embrace it. Either say the stupid word or pretend it never happened. You can’t have it both ways. It’s the half-measures and compromise that bugs me, and I was worried that Sol would be a half-measure take on Qui-Gon, so was very pleased when he was allowed to screw up as badly as he did. And I did feel pity for him, despite the fact it’s his mistake and identified as such. (I also kinda liked the implication the entire team is a bunch of screw-ups being sent somewhere where they (theoretically) can’t do too much damage. Carrie-Ann Moss points out that Sol doesn’t have - but wants - a padwan, which felt like such a great little detail.) Because I like flawed characters, I find them easier to relate to than paragons.)
Dan McAlister
I have my qualms with the show: while I actually think the first six episodes are fabulous, Sol’s flashback made him seem too unreasonable and foolish to take seriously as a character, which tanked the ending for me. But your piece reminded me there is a good deal of complexity and meaning to dig into here, and the last two paragraphs seem especially relevant. Thank you for that.
Pat the Vandal
It's really been interesting to watch this show get reevaluated over time.
MDO
I haven’t watched Acolyte, but this column makes me consider watching it. Especially after the “shock” election this year—which honestly took me by surprise, showing how in my own faction I was—it’s important to ask questions about binarism, and how it destroys balance. I think a lot of people saw this election as a moral choice of black and white—for some, race; for others, morality; for some, binarisms of (perceived) strength vs (perceived) weakness, status quo vs change, and even the binarism itself—left vs right, whatever the hell that means. Nobody can articulate a concept of “left” that doesn’t include “not right” and same for the other; but when we ask what we want from our leaders both sides will say “make things better, but mainly for us.” Cities haven’t suffered a fraction of the devastation of American manufacturing, people in those cities count themselves “lucky” to not be born in a rust-belt skid row, yet those same people cannot understand why decisions that hurt cities and give the skidders vengeance (even self-harm is harm) are the choice they make every time. Wouldn’t you lash out if you lost hope? Or, for all the former Kamala supporters who are now gleefully saying “I told you so!” and planning to inform on their conservative immigrant neighbors, how does it feel now that it’s on your side? I won’t pretend that the election was a good thing; we’re all going to suffer because oligarchs run our country. But we are not oligarchs, and the sooner we stop creating an artificial binary between us and the same people who have been brainwashed by oligarchs to hate us, the quicker we will find allies. Must we love those who hate us and turn the other cheek when they strike us? Not yet, we’re not that nice. But remember that anybody can be stuck inside a binary not of their own making. Even me.
