Now that’s more like it
Mentally, I had given up on The Acolyte. After opening with two decent episodes, episode three turned dire, and episode four was just spinning its wheels. I stopped caring. Then along came episode five and I realised why last week’s instalment was so boring—it was just set up for this absolutely corker. (Nothing can justify episode three, though)
That’s not me forgiving the mess this show has made of the narrative’s pacing. I still have huge problems with The Acolyte, least of which is it becoming the kind of show that you can only recommend by saying ‘It only gets good at episode five.’ (I also have an issue the decision to make this a T.V. show in the first place—as with most Disney+ shows, I feel like there’s a great, lean movie somewhere in this bloated story—but that’s a discussion for another day)
Nevertheless, episode five—Night—was hugely entertaining, and by far the best episode of The Acolyte yet. Is it worth slogging through four episodes of mud to get to this point? I’m not sure yet—the three remaining episodes will be the judge of that. But let’s get into why Night worked so well.
Jedi-Fu
Episode four ended on the promise of action to come, but given how poorly things had been handled up to this point, I was half expecting some kind of fake-out where a character gets knocked unconscious and wakes up in the aftermath of the destruction. My stomach sank, then, in the opening moments of the show when this appeared to be the case.
Thankfully, I’d jumped the gun, and what followed was nearly twenty minutes of non-stop action. That’s nearly the full length of the episode. (Again—terrible decision to split episodes four and five up like this when both could’ve easily been condensed into one decent forty-minute episode. Remember when T.V. episodes used to be forty minutes?) It was amazing action, too—probably the best fight scenes in all of Star Wars. Yes, I’m serious.
From Osha glimpsing ‘The Master’ slaying Jedi through the thicket to Dafne Keen’s Jecki wielding lightsabers likes a whirlwind, the episode is constantly finding new ways to evolve the stakes, the visual style of the fights, and the intensity. It’s really wonderful stuff, and it goes to dark places I honestly hadn’t expected. It’s been so long (in real life) since the events of Revenge of the Sith that I think a lot of us had forgotten how shocking and purposely distasteful the villains of the franchise can be.
Secrets
For as interesting and well-choreographed as all the fighting is though, there isn’t a huge amount of plot progression in Night. Sure, there’re some surprises, but again, the mystery around why any of this is happening has yet to be addressed. It’s not like I fully expected the mystery to be revealed by episode five out of eight; my issue is that there’s no real sense of progress with it.
We know that Sol knows this Big Secret, but every time the narrative pushes him to reveal it to Osha/us, the show holds up a big sign that says ‘Just Bear With Us For a Little While Longer!’ I wish Osha was taking a more active role in seeking out the truth of what happened in her childhood; instead she seems pretty much content to let it slide until the writers find a good time to tell her.
It’s slightly frustrating to watch this play out, but by no means is it ruining the show, and I doubt it will hinder your enjoyment of episode five all that much either. There are some really fantastic beats in this show, with some minor characters being given the spotlight in a way that justifies their existence.
For the first time since The Acolyte began, I’m genuinely excited for the next episode. It’s been a real rollercoaster in terms of quality so far though, so I’m not exactly confident that the writers will pull off their superhero landing, but here’s hoping.
***
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