The Acolyte

Last week, the season finale of The Acolyte dropped on Disney+. The Acolyte takes place 100 years before the events of the Phantom Menace and follows a Jedi Master and his former padawan as they investigate a series of Jedi murders. I was pretty excited for this show and and was interested to see a story outside of the timeline of the movies.

This was a very disappointing show. On paper, it had a great chance for success. It has an interesting premise, takes place in an unexplored time in the Star Wars canon, and features lightsaber battles that pull information from Samurai movies. However, the execution of these ideas made this show absolutely abysmal. Starting off, all of the characters are extremely unlikable. The show tries to make them all super complex but it instead results in a bunch of unlikable characters that have incredibly stupid motivations and an ending where it is unclear who the real villains are. The arcs of the character also seem to flip on a dime. The two main characters essentially have their personalities switch by the end of the story. I also felt that the story itself was pretty directionless. There wasn't enough plot to last 8 episodes, so each episode just feels super drawn out and unnecessary. It never feels like it is building towards anything which makes the resolution even more stupid. The ending itself just left such a poor taste in my mouth that it really soured me on the whole show. This show also seems to have no love for the franchise. I'm not a Star Wars purist or anything and don't think the show ruined my childhood but it blatantly disregards that canon and things people love about Star Wars. It portrays the Jedi in such a negative light and doesn't bring in any of the elements that people love about Star Wars.

Overall, this was a very disappointing and just plain bad show. I was hoping for a standalone Jedi detective story with some Samurai elements and it couldn't even deliver that. It instead brings a soap opera of two twin sisters which nobody asked for. This is definitely one of the worst things Star Wars has put out.

Score: 3/10 Grade: D Recommendation: Skip it