‘The Acolyte’ Episode 3 Review: One Of The Worst ‘Star Wars’ Episodes Ever Made

The third episode of Disney’s The Acolyte is an embarrassment to the entire franchise, though the same could be said for so much Star Wars these days outside of Andor.

Here’s one exchange between two characters:

Mae: “The Jedi are bad!”

Osha: “The Jedi are good!”

Later, the same two characters—the twin protagonist/antagonists of the story, as children in this flashback episode—say to one another: “What have you done?” “What have you done?” “What have YOU done?”

I want to ask Disney the same question: What have you done?

This entire episode is a bad joke. We learn that Mae and Osha lived with their mothers in a society of witches, all of whom are female. It appears they were conceived using the Force. Or something. Force-using witches are also apparently frowned upon in this galaxy. They call the Force, the Thread. I’m getting Dark Side vibes here, though I’m also getting the sense that this show will try to be all edgy and make the Jedi out to be the bad guys. Which we’ve seen play out about half a dozen times at this point.

Osha and Mae fight with one another constantly and are very, very irritating throughout the episode. Osha wants to leave her people and Mae wants to stay. When the Jedi show up and ask to test the girls for their Force powers, they agree to fake not having any, but Jedi Master Sol convinces Osha not to lie, and she says she wants to be a Jedi and leave with them, against her mothers’ wishes.

Mae is upset and threatens to kill her sister, locking her in their chambers and burning the entire witch village to the ground, apparently killing everyone. Sol saves Osha and they escape.

What a disaster.

Scattered thoughts:

• IGN says this episode offers up “a lot of tantalizing new layers to how we perceive both the Jedi and the Force” and I would like to know if we use different versions of the word “tantalizing.”
• I’m confused about the entire motivation of Mae, who wants revenge on the Jedi but is actually the one responsible for killing everybody—if, that is, anyone is actually dead (after all, both twins thought the other one was dead—it seems likely none of the witches died at all).
• The Jedi in episode 2 killed himself over this. Oy vey.
• The witch chant was one of the lamest chants in the history of all chants. I wanted to giggle maniacally listening to it. I also wanted to cry.

I have a theory. Imposters have taken over Star Wars (and lots of other popular genre properties, from The Witcher to True Detective). They’re masquerading as fans and pretending—and this is worse—to know how to tell a good story. It is more obvious than ever that they do not.