Summary
We get another fun and needed episode of the Acolyte.
If you couldn’t tell I was being sarcastic. Now to address somethings before we begin, I had a few people ask me why do I cover this show if I don’t like it, and there’s two reasons for that and no it is not because I am going crazy, though the show makes me fee like that at times. Firstly, it is because I think bad writing and bad content deserves to be called out so that other people can see this and stay clear, a lot of people are seeing and engaging with these reviews, according to my stats, so I am providing a service. Secondly, because a lot of trolls out there tell me to shut up and call me names because I am critical of the show and I will not bow to pressure and stop.
That said lets carry on, so this week we get a slightly better time than last week but not by much. We get to see more of the Sith who is very obviously the twin’s mother, as Jodie Turner Smith is billed to be in more episodes. They try their best to make her scary or do much of anything with her but ultimately it just comes off as cheaply done character work that tries to set up this great mystery when in actuality it is all obvious.
Then there is the return of Ki-Adi-Mundi only 100 years before he was born. Now I am no Lord of the EU or Master of the Lore, but it just seems to me like they needed someone vaguely recognisable to put in here, they don’t have even the slightest regard that this breaks cannon or anything like that they just do it for the sake of it. Moreover, after that the show then changed the characters Wookipedia entry in real time in order to try and get around what they knew to be a lore destroying moment. Once again it just shows a level of disrespect that this show has towards the audience and the franchise as a whole.
The flip with have with Mae, Amandla Stenberg, finally deciding to give up her mission and to try and find her sister instead made little sense. Ultimately the show couldn’t answer the question of why now, why had she not done this before, why would she want to see her sister after threatening to kill her. It is just a heel turn for the point of plot. Speaking off as always Stenberg is a devotee of the Alaqua Cox school of acting and shows no emotion as Mae goes through this massive character shift. She is not a very good actor.
PS. I took an extra day writing this as whilst I was writing it Stenberg’s diss track to the fans dropped and I needed some time to process that. Not only does it show just how out of touch she is, calling herself oppressed when she and her family are millionaires, whilst also making a video about racism whilst constantly bragging and focusing the shot on her for maximum narcissism. However, the reason I wanted to include it is because it just shows you what the people making this show think of you the fan, yes there may be some racists and she may have suffered some abuse, but to make a video where she says that all Star Wars people are haters and want to oppress her and stuff like this is not the way to combat racism. All this does is make the fandom even more divided as non-racists are angry that she is lumping everyone in together.
Finally, we have an incredibly forced scene that I just want to draw your attention to as I think it highlights everything wrong with modern Star Wars. There is a scene in which the gang find a new alien character and rather than call it it as people would, they instead decided to debate its pronouns. Now this scene is bad for a couple of reasons, firstly there was no need for it, it was done so they could say oh look we are talking about pronouns on the show aren’t we diverse, but it just shows how shallow and forced in this message is and how they are just ticking things off a list. They don’t actually care about meaningful representation just the appearance of it. Secondly, the scene slows the whole episode down which makes it stick out even worse, the writing is so poor it makes you consider was it written by an AI.
Overall, though it wasn’t as bad as episode 3, it is still pretty terrible and makes you debate the difference between awful and god awful.
1/5
Pros.
It is more watchable than the last episode
Cons.
The destruction of the lore
The pronoun scene
Mae’s randomly shift in personality
They couldn’t be bothered to let us see the Wookie Jedi fight
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