The penultimate episode of The Acolyte’s first season is out, and it’s the second flashback episode of the season. After seeing the fateful events on Brendok as Osha and Mae were children in episode three, we re-visit them – but whereas in the previous episode they were from the witches’ point of view, now it’s time to see them from the point of view of the Jedi.
It’s the episode that promises to give some answers to the mysteries played up throughout the season, so let’s dive into the episode review of chapter seven, titled “Choice”. As always, full spoilers are ahead.
We finally got the answers to the central driving question in the series: what really happened on Brendok? What have the Jedi been hiding? The things we thought would be mysteries – like the identity of the Stranger, for instance – weren’t really treated as big reveals, but this one has been built up for a while. So in this episode we get another flashback to those fateful events on the planet, and this time it’s from the Jedi’s point of view. And I think it’s pretty well done, because everything from the Jedi’s point of view does look really suspicious.
The Jedi weren’t on the planet looking for the girls, but doing some investigating. There was a great hyperspace disaster that devastated Brendok, but this supposedly uninhabited planet has rebounded very quickly (one hundred years later), so the Jedi are wondering if there is a vergence in the Force on the planet. This is a really cool reveal, because it ties into the High Republic publishing. To kick off the era, Charles Soule’s book Light of the Jedi told of the hyperspace disaster, where a transport was destroyed in hyperspace by the pirate gang the Nihil, and pieces of the ship flew into various systems and wrecked great harm. Brendok, it turns out, was one such planet. That’s a great connection point for fans, as is the exploration of a vergence. Anakin Skywalker was described in The Phantom Menace as a vergence, for example, and so too was the cave on Dagobah. A vergence is a nexus point of Force energy specifically located at a point, and the Jedi are looking into it. Leslye Headland has said that the girls aren’t a vergence themselves (unlike Anakin), but she didn’t go into any further details.
As they’re looking for a vergence, the Jedi discover that these two girls are on the planet, with a group of mysterious witches. Sol longs for a padawan, which causes him to take even more of an interest in Mae and (especially) Osha. Torbin, meanwhile, as a young padawan is homesick and just wants to return to Coruscant. These two ambitions, married together, leads to the Jedi investigating and infiltrating the Ascension ceremony. Though Indara – who throughout the episode is seen as the voice of reason – wants to wait and contact the Jedi Council first, Sol knows the ceremony will take place and doesn’t know what that means. So they interrupt the ceremony, where the witches take control of Torbin. But, importantly, we see that he had to, in a sense, agree to their temptations in his head. He just wants to go home. Though he’s in many ways an instigator of the events of this episode, he’s nonetheless a very sympathetic character, because he’s just a young padawan homesick on the frontier of their mission.
Things continue to escalate, though, when Mae tells Sol and Indara aboard their ship that the Ascension ceremony involves sacrifice. Which, again, makes it really understandable why the Jedi might have gotten a wrong idea. And, granted, we still don’t really know what this ceremony was all about, because it seems the witches are capable of some really strange stuff (why does Mae start to disappear when Mother Aniseya does later in the episode, for instance?). Torbin’s homesickness, combined with Sol’s desire for a padawan and concern for Osha, causes the Jedi to spring into action. And the biggest domino falls when, after infiltrating the headquarters, Sol kills Mother Aniseya. It turns out Mae did start the fire, though accidentally, and as Aniseya begins to disappear (surely to help Osha), and Mae begins to disappear too, Sol reacts by killing her with his lightsaber. It was a tragic overreaction, as he learns that he just killed the one person in the cult who was willing to let Osha leave, but it’s an understandable miscalculation from the Jedi’s point of view.
I think it also sheds light on why Sol is so slow to draw his lightsaber in the rest of the series, including in the ensuing battle with Mother Korril. He was too quick to draw his saber with Mother Aniseya, to devastating consequences, and it seems he’s learned and is very hesitant to use it ever since then. But the damage has been done, and as Korril fights back, she and the witches take control of Kelnacca’s mind. We see the Wookiee Jedi fight against Sol and Torbin, and seeing a Wookie wielding a lightsaber with all his strength is terrifying. He injures Torbin and gives him the facial scars with, it appears, his claws, which was forbidden of Wookiees in combat. This is presumably why he goes into hiding, which is pretty tragic, given the mistake he made while his mind was controlled.
Indara is able to stop him, but only by driving the witches out of his mind and killing them. All the witches are dead, it seems, but Mother Korril is nowhere to be seen. That’s awfully suspicious, and I think we’ll learn more about her and her allegiance in the finale. It definitely seems there’s more to her.
Sol goes to save Osha, but the episode gives us a different perspective on the fateful bridge scene from episode three. Sol uses the Force to hold up both bridges, trying to save both girls, but isn’t strong enough, so he must choose one. He lets Mae fall to her (presumed) death so that he can save Osha. Aboard the ship, Sol plans to come clean to the Jedi Council, but Indara says that to do so would ruin Osha’s life further, so the four Jedi – the four that Mae has been hunting – decide to tell a lie for the good of Osha.
The theme of the episode seems to be that the Jedi’s good intentions lead to unintended consequences. They aren’t the bad guys, and I’m glad that the show didn’t make that even more nebulous. The Jedi are trying to do what was right – exactly what Torbin said to Mae when he told her that they were just doing what they thought was right. Impulsive? Yes. Unwise? At times, probably. Overreacting? Of course. But well-intended? Absolutely. It’s just that their good intentions have tragic consequences. As Mother Aniseya pointedly tells Sol, “some day, those noble intentions you all have will destroy every Jedi in the galaxy”. That obviously foreshadows the day where that is exactly what will happen. The Jedi didn’t lose their way by becoming evil, but despite the best of intentions, they lost their way nonetheless.
I wonder, as we speculated with last week’s episode, if the events of Brendok will come to light and if the Jedi’s attempts to cover up what actually happened will cause the Senate to further distrust the Jedi and exert more influence. This is all setting us up for the Jedi at the time of the prequel trilogy, which I think is interesting.
Overall, I thought the answers given in this episode surrounding the Jedi were satisfying, but I was surprised at how much we still didn’t learn. Most prominently, what’s going on with Osha and Mae. The Jedi seem to discover that there was one essence split into two, but we don’t know the details of their creation, or their significance, or what the Ascension was, or what Aniseya was doing when she was disappearing, or what Korril is really up to. There’s a lot we don’t know that I hope will be explored in the finale. But as far as the Jedi go, I thought the episode showed them as the noble, well-intentioned good guys who made some tragic mistakes that led to devastating consequences. There wasn’t anything major or galaxy-shattering, but there didn’t need to be, because the episode landed well enough without it. It’s hard to believe there’s only one episode left, and it will surely deal with the fallout of the sisters learning the truth – and, hopefully, we learn a bit more too.
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