OPINION: We spend plenty of time on this site writing about the products such as soundbars, projectors, and TVs, but not as much about what you watch on them. With the season finale of Disney Plus‘ The Acolyte wrapped up, I feel like flipping that dynamic round for the latest Sound & Vision column.
Slight story spoilers abound if you’ve not seen the series but I’ll start out by saying that I’m not a ‘hater’ of the series but I do ultimately feel disappointed by what transpired.
Created by Leslye Headland, who was one of the creative forces behind Netflix‘s Russian Doll, divorcing The Acoylte from the modern Star Wars chronology and setting it 100 years before the events we’re familiar was a good decision.
To separate it from characters who have become overly familiar was initially a breath of fresh air. A chance to tell a story differently, in an era less recognisable with new characters is what I’ve wanted from more recent Star Wars films and series.
So it’s a shame that the characters were all so bland.
Spoilers ahead
The series started as a mystery – which is fair enough considering it’s about the emerging presence of the secretive Sith – but the first three/four episodes unfolded glacially, the character depth for the Jedi aside from Lee Jung-jae’s Master Sol was not much more than the blurb on the back of a book cover. By the time episode five came around, I doubt many viewers particularly cared about them or their fate.
And the twins – Mae and Osha – played by Amanda Steinberg as a grown up, was a dull character to fashion a series around. Despite everything that happened to the twins they came across as emotionally cold and distant, but that could be said for the majority of characters in the series. And I’m not convinced by Osha’s progression through the series, her decision in the finale felt it rang untrue to what came before.
The show kept the viewer at arm’s length, whether through the mystery or the Jedi’s default emotional restraint, which makes a very good case as to why you probably shouldn’t make a series wrapped around the emotionally insipid and rational Jedi order.
The characters weren’t particularly engaging. I don’t understand Sol’s reasoning throughout the series. He wants Osha as his padawan for reasons that he doesn’t seem particularly clear about (to protect them from what, exactly?), which mirrors the series’ own confusion.
A waste
The use of Carrie Anne-Moss was a waste, effectively only seen through flashbacks, which is a criminal waste; and from a visual perspective, this might be the blandest-looking entry in the Star Wars TV series. For a series that cost a reported $180 million, it doesn’t look like that money is up on the screen.
Who knew that shooting in Wales would be so expensive?
But the fights were spectacularly choreographed, putting the recent film trilogy’s laboured fights to shame; Episode 5 was a particular highlight with its fast and violent action. It’s more of what I wanted the series to be, and what I thought the series was going to be. In essence, The Acolyte didn’t live up to expectations. The series felt like a step back rather than a step forward.
What we got was a slow-paced, sometimes thoughtful but meandering series, with a mystery that wasn’t particularly interesting and characters that lacked engagement. There was so much promise with The Acolyte but I’m not sure it quite knew what it wanted to be, which speaks of the wider identity crisis Star Wars seems to be going through.
