#acolyte speculation

[portrait-of-ariel]

I want Qimir to retwist Osha’s clay locs, taking his time to learn the texture of her hair and appreciate how different it is from his own. I want him to interlace his fingers around the coils, then massage her temples while he cleanses her scalp, as they shower together. I want Osha to trust him so immensely that she lets him do these wonderful things to her without protest or fearing judgment for her texture. Instead she leans into this new comfort, luxuriating in all the ways he makes her feel beautiful and special.

As a black woman, this would mean so much to me—having her be loved on in such a way that’s rarely shown on television.

[fulcrum-art-fox]

Osha “maybe I wasn’t a very good student” deserves to know that the circumstances of what happened and the choices of the Jedi practically set her up to fail. Like she needs to know that. I know at this point it’ll probably make everything worse but she deserves to know. And she really needs to know before she and Mae cross paths again because she still thinks Mae killed everyone she knew and loved and I’m terrified of what Osha might do to Mae if she persists under this lie

[fleetcaptain]

I'm half convinced the big twist is going to be that qimir is a grey jedi

[fulcrum-art-fox]

And to be fair to Vernestra’s apprentice, his logic is fair, like, in a murder investigation, which this basically is, if there is only one survivor of a family or group, that individual often immediately becomes the prime suspect, at least until you can rule them out, and then you add onto that Sol’s erratic and suspicious looking behaviour and he is not helping his case at all

Also kinda ironic if the show starts with his former apprentice being accused of something she didn’t do and ends with he himself being accused of a crime he didn’t commit

Sol is so getting framed for the jedi murders (and probably killed in the finale, if i may be so bold)

whatever he and his three colleagues did or witnessed was so bad they kept it a secret for 16 years, Torbin and Kelnacca at the very least lived in isolation afterwards, and Torbin literally killed himself from the guilt. Mae and possibly Osha are about to find out the full truth and the information getting back to the Jedi will kill Sol's credibility, whether there was any wrongdoing on his part or not.

since he is now the sole (heh) survivor of the Brendok mission, it may look like he has been trying to silence the others, by sending Mae to kill them. the fact that he has almost intercepted her twice certainly looks suspicious.

he was on an off-the-books mission that went horribly wrong. the group that sent him are very interested in containing the information for the greater good, and he is conveniently the only jedi survivor once again.

the transmissions the Jedi got from the ship are: 1) Sol being obviously messed up and saying his whole team is dead and 2) a distressed person that sounds like their civilian companion contacting the Jedi before being interrupted by a stun blast. incredibly concerning whether the receiver believes this person to be Osha or Mae.

the locals talk to the Jedi investigators and definitely saw Sol and Osha getting back to the ship. maybe they didn't take much notice but they would have at the very least seen significantly fewer people, one in jedi mission robes, boarding the ship than the 10 that arrived, and leaving right away.

the crime scene bears clear evidence of the jedi team fighting a powerful Force user and getting killed by a lightsaber - clear enough that a novice can reliably tell. Sol's friend Kelnacca was killed in his home, apparently sitting down in his chair. if Vernestra's team shares the mission objective with the wider order, they will find out that the dead Jedi were there to apprehend a young woman who is skilled but not nearly that dangerous, and doesn't seem to fight with a saber at all.

this young woman has a personal connection to Sol going back to her childhood, her survival and very existence was covered up by Sol or his colleagues, and Sol has argued several times to 1) have faith in her/try to help her and 2) personally be the one leading the mission to bring her in. she also has been noted to have the marks of unofficial jedi training.

Sol's ship, which he recently sent a transmission from, cuts off all communication and disappears the second he is told to leave his transponder on and that the rescue team will imminently arrive in the area.

[twinsunstars]

wait. qimir said “don’t you remember me?” to sol. what does that mean

[shield-and-saber]

okay okay, hear me out

qimir's scar is twisted and jagged. he was abandoned (""abandoned"" could mean anything right now) by his master.

vernestra has a light whip. she believes strongly in the jedi, the jedi code and the order and what they stand for, how the republic views them. maybe enough to become desperate, to make a mistake

vernestra was qimir's master ???

edit: qimir would likely have been driven by intense emotions and vernestra would likely have cautioned him against that, tried to reign him in like obi wan did with anakin and. well, we all know how that ended

[jedikali]

One thing at the end of the Acolyte that puzzled me at first was the fact Vernestra and her Jedi team gave Sol a Viking burial on Brendok after they had retrieved the bodies of the murdered Jedi on Khofar for burial.

We see the same in Tales of the Jedi with the murdered Jedi Master.

Then I realized that it was a cover up.

Vernestra told the Senate Committee that Sol had taken his own life. If she had taken Sol’s body back to Coruscant for burial then there would have been an official autopsy and it would have revealed that he couldn’t have taken his own life and Vernestra couldn’t lie about the manner of his death.

Burning his body on a pond/lake would make it virtually impossible to retrieve any bones that hadn’t been destroyed in the fire and reveal the truth.

I’m reminded of the book Clone Wars: Wild Space where Padme and Obi-Wan admit to Bail Organa that they have known about the Sith being back for ten years and that every one who saw Maul on Naboo was sworn to secrecy to prevent panic.

Qui-Gon’s body being burned on Naboo helps solidify the idea of a cover up as it prevents too many people seeing that Qui-Gon has an obvious lightsaber injury to his gut.

[lesbiansandpuns]

This is super fair; I think the writers are laying crumbs but being intentionally cryptic. That said, here are my thoughts, in a reblog instead of a reply bc they’re gonna be really long lol. This is aided by watching every ep 3x (except Ep 5, I’m in mourning), BUT I very well could be wrong about much of this! We’ll see.

General Plot Speculations

The writers have said the whole time that this is going to have a lot of twists and turns, and because there are a LOT of unanswered Qs, I think we have not seen the whole story yet. Ep 3 had so many holes in it—why did all of the witches die? Why did Mother Aniseya die apart from everyone else? It didn’t seem like it was the fire that killed any of them, so what actually happened? And why was Sol there in the first place? He could have had a premonition or something, but I feel like something else is going on. AND, Ep 3 is from Osha’s perspective. I think something else happened that night that Osha didn’t know about, and the Jedi are at least in part to blame for what happened. (Esp bc if they aren’t, why would Torbin ask for Mae’s forgiveness and then kill himself? And why would Sol look so devastated when he tells Osha in this past ep that he’ll explain on the ship?)

My suspicion is the Jedi (maybe just Sol?), knowing the kids had been instructed to lie and knowing that Osha did genuinely want to go with them, decided to mount a rescue operation that went really, really badly. And if Mae saw any of that happen, it might have been what pushed her over the edge (although obviously she was already really struggling with boundaries and attachment). Also, at the end of Ep 3, Mae literally looks completely fine. That might be a plot hole, but I think what’s more likely is what we saw—or what was implied—of Mae falling far enough that both Sol and Osha assumed she died is not actually what happened. Also, IMO, Indara did not seem shocked enough that Mae was still alive, and Torbin seemed pretty unsurprised to see her, and Qimir also seemed unsurprised that Osha was alive, which feels like a separate but related issue.

* The trailer also seems to imply that there was a fight between Indara, Kelnacca, and Sol, which obviously had to happen before Indara died and therefore likely happened on Brendok. That also strongly implies we still have at least one more flashback coming, likely from another character’s perspective.

The Dark Side Users’ Intentions

Regardless of what actually happened, Mae clearly blames the Jedi for it. She’s also obviously both Force-sensitive and some other flavor of special given the cryptic “how you created them” comment from Koril. I think Qimir found her and used her hatred of the Jedi to convince her to become his apprentice because she’s powerful, and I think she went along with it bc she hates the Jedi, blamed them for her sister’s death (bc she thought Osha was dead for sixteen years!), and wanted more power. She does seem to view it as her inheritance to be a non-Jedi Force user, and Qimir’s caginess about whether he’s actually a Sith or not suggests to me he might be being a little flexible with the “rules.” I also think it’s notable that she doesn’t have a red saber (yet?), so until Qimir had to get involved, there was no risk of the Sith (??) being truly discovered. Some of the dialogue in Ep 4 suggests the concept of a splinter Order is at the very least fathomable, so I think the Jedi would have assumed that was what was happening and not actual Dark Side users. So as far as their plan goes, I think most of this was not supposed to happen.

Osha

I think Osha genuinely believes in the Jedi. I have a lot of questions about how she even knew about the Jedi, but that’s kind of beside the point for now. What matters is that she believed in the Jedi before even joining them (she said “the Jedi are good!” to her sister, and drew what I’m pretty sure is supposed to be the High Republic Jedi crest in her notebook), and appears to believe in them even now. Her first reaction upon seeing Yord was joy. Even after she’d been arrested and was on a prison transport, she said “I have faith in the Jedi.” And she kind of ran from the Jedi after the ship crashed, but that seemed much more like “I feel like I look really guilty now” and not anything about the Jedi themselves. And obviously she’s been working with them closely and getting along with everyone fairly well.

That said, I think there’s a chance that they’re going to say Osha’s memory was altered in some way. I’ll be kind of unhappy if that ends up being true, but they have hinted to it twice now, so I suspect it might happen. In Ep 2, Qimir alluded to the Jedi having the ability to wipe his memory, and in Ep 5 Mae says Osha was brainwashed; memory manipulation has also been spotlit a few other times in this show, including Sol searching Mae's memory trying to find her Master and somehow getting that guy from the prison transport to accurately recall and relate what happened with Osha. (Also memory wipe was used on Revan in Legends and the showrunner is a fan of KOTOR!) If they go that route, I also think there’s a chance Sol’s memory was altered, given he seemed really convinced he saw Mae fall to her death and that appears to not have happened (obviously it wasn’t to her death, but it seems like it didn’t happen at all).

So, in summary: I think a lot more happened on Brendok than they’re showing us, and I think the Jedi are—whether well-intentioned or not, but hopefully well-intentioned—more responsible for that than Osha has been led to believe. And I think Mae was genuinely just supposed to be completing (this stage of?) her Dark Side training, and this number of Jedi getting involved and discovering Qimir and his red saber was not supposed to happen.

FWIW, I also think Qimir is not the ultimate Master, and whoever that is will appear in a later episode (and, probably, kill everyone, given the general vibe of the High Republic and the line in TPM about the Sith not being seen in a millenium), but that’s more speculation than the rest of this post lol

Disclaimer: I’m NOT a whiny hater by any means, I am enjoying the acolyte so far, and I especially liked the first couple episodes, and the fights are fun etc.

That being said, as episodes go on I feel less and less certain about character motivations and the overall plot. Like I know of course at this point not everything in the story would be revealed and there are mysteries. But I don’t understand what questions the writers want me to be asking? It’s hard for me to make out the shape of the story, even of what we already have.

What’s the point of the sith’s plan? Why did Mae go along with it, what does she think she’s working towards? How does Osha feel about the Jedi and why? Idk it all feels sorta nebulous and hard for me to pinpoint and I can’t tell if that’s on purpose or not and what story I’m supposed to be following.

Ok yeah so like if anyone understands what’s being put down and wants to share in the notes, PLEASE be my guest

[space-blue]

Acolyte theory stuff...

In the trailer and in the youngling training scene, Sol says this:

Close your eyes. Your eyes can deceive you. We must not trust them.

And it REALLY jumped at me, due to my theory that Mae was not actually there with Osha on that gangway. They both think she fell to her death, but has been shown running through the forest on fire, and also the next day is neither injured nor even singed.

We also have Yord tell Osha that the Sith "gets in your head and stays there", which Osha replies with "My mother could do that".

We have this yet unseen shot of all of them with black eyes, so I think we're yet to see the witches "true" work.

There's also a shot of Kelnacca attacking Torbin, and Torbin getting on a speeder at night. There's no way of knowing though if Torbin is defending or attacking, or if Kelnacca is black-eyed in this shot or not.

We have a lot of hints that Qimir was actually there that night. He expects Sol to remember him. He thinks Sol has "hiding his face", which could mean lying to Osha.

The way he speaks about his inner darkness, I wonder if the witches' power reveals the real darkness hidden inside their heart or something?

Also!! While Torbin went on to isolate himself and feels awful enough about it all to commit suicide over it, Kelnacca has been studying the witches' symbols, crazy old man style :

It's the same design Mae has :

Clearly Kelnacca has been obsessed with it since then, so it has to be relevant somehow. It's possible that the Jedi fucked up by interrupting the ritual.

Finally... There's obviously a theory that Mae and Osha will actually switch. And I kind of agree. Rewatching episode 4 today with friends, I noted how Sol once again asked Osha to have faith in Mae. He does so in episode 2, and in 4 he says "but she remains your family". Implying she should make her peace and believe in her.

And MAE does that to Osha. Even after accusing her of being brainwashed, she's so overwhelmed with their reunion, she embraces her fully. She follows Sol's lesson more than Osha, who again displays very black and white thinking. She's extremely binary against Mae. And there she twists her arm and calls her a criminal, even though she could have soooo easily asked Mae to be understanding and to help her get Sol to the ship and at least hear him out.

Osha is constantly unable to forgive. I think she's going to get Qimir's twisted version of events, and Sol will give Mae his version, and each will fall into place.

Now that being said... Sol will have bad spaceship issues (next episode most likely, from the trailer shots of the ship tumbling through space ice and Sol piloting) and since he and Mae both heard the word "Sith", I don't actually like their chances of survival.

Osha will become acolyte, and Qimir and her will found the knights of Ren or whatever. The real mystery being WTF happened on Brendock.

[camuca-art]

I keep thinking about why Osha left the order, she says it was her own decision and it was related to her inability to let go. But now that we've seen what happened, I wonder if Sol didn't have something to do about it. He was attached to Osha from the start, but attachment is the root of the problem. What if Osha tried to let go, but Sol wouldn't let her? Not consciously though, but maybe his own inability to let go made him pull her towards him and that fed into Osha too.

[a-heart-of-kyber]

No, no cuz listen.

@dealingdreams and I have discussed how Qimir/The Stranger gives trapped animal vibes. And she mentioned how maybe it was something similar to Ben wherein someone spoke to him from a young age in his mind.

(Kylo theme plays in the distance)

(It literally also played while Kelnacca...had someone else...in his head.)

And idk where, but someone pointed out that his cave has those Cortosis veins. So it, or maybe even the whole island, potentially has a similar veil of protection as the helmet aka blocking thoughts/energy etc.

Which means, if that's the case, this dude is hiding and has been hiding for a long time.

He only seemed to take on the "Qimir smuggler rat man" persona because Mae wasn't doing what she was supposed too and he wasn't even sensed by the Jedi in the force. Overall, he probably assumed he had laid low long enough to go unnoticed without the helmet.

Then he made himself very obvious, and if someone were looking/feeling/sensing they probably found him. Aka, his display on Khofar led Plagueis to the Unknown Planet.

Cuz remember...the helmet broke. He didn't have it on for hours after that fight.

I am personally not going to assume EU stuff is canon until it is made canon. So, while it could be Bal'Demnic, that has not been confirmed. Additionally, just because it could be Bal'Demnic it doesn't mean Plagueis has tapped that resource yet. It could still be unknown to even him until right now.

Now, whatever happened between Qimir and Vernestra, we know she thought he was dead. Aka, he was either actually dead or very close to dead.

(Additionally, this would mean that he initially had no reason to hide from her if he could assume she thinks him dead. So, if he has been hiding, he's been hiding from someone else.)

Plagueis most likely scooped that boy up and treated him like a science project for a bit. Screwing with him mentally in the process (a nice bit of further Sith ideological brainwashing). Then, of course, Qimir became the Apprentice.

(This would make him a bit of an analog of Darth Venamis. Far from the same, but taking bits of him...but also, surviving/escaping being an experiment.)

Which could mean he has been fed the Sith code and the Jedi code by those masters, but he has already had traumatic experiences with Both sides...leading to this lack of care for rules/wanting freedom.

(Aka Power of Two, not Rule of Two "rules rules rules if you never follow them, you never have to break them.")

And Qimir has repeatedly been compared to a Vampire in interviews and has comments and imagery within the narrative that lean that way as well.

(The floating/disappearing, "it was a very long time ago", the implication that when Sol knew him Sol was probably a child...being carried away in a swarm of bats-I mean moths)

I know so many people think Plagueis is involved with Osha and Mae...but I don't think he is, yet.

At the moment, I still think he's there for Qimir.

(Also, I'm not really pro having this guy show up for 3 seconds and suddenly literally everything is about him and he did it all. If he already did everything, where is he meant to go within the narrative exactly? If he already knows how to create life and Has Created Life?...anyways)

I think he's checking in on his potentially immortal or at least inhumanly long-lived test subject... I mean Apprentice (who may or may not have actually been resurrected). And, somehow, said Apprentice has linked up with a woman who was created using the force.

These two are literally Plagueis's version of Christmas.

P.S. I think he wants an acolyte for exactly the reasons he said. We have been repeatedly shown and told that Qimir/The Stranger speaks the truth...or, at least, his truth.

But...this doesn't necessarily disprove my other idea that he wants to draw out Vernestra have her go against Plagueis so he does not have to do that.

Going back to the idea that both of these Masters are powerful and they have both screwed him up royally.

And despite this, he can still fight blind in the force.

He is extremely balanced for someone who realistically shouldn't be if he's fully dark.

[portrait-of-ariel]

🛑 Controversial Opinion 🛑:

Mother Koril doesn’t get enough respect or appreciation in the show. Aniseya created the twins but Koril carried them, and I would argue she’s just as much their mother as Aniseya. There’s nothing wrong with having two mothers. Also let us never forget that four Jedi who went meddling on Brendok led to the deaths of nearly fifty women. An entire coven perished in a span of a few days because of the Jedi’s colonizing, strong-arming dogma. I said what I said 🤷🏾‍♀️.

[pumkinpie579]

He set up a whole seduction suite and seems so like her in temperment and goals, and Im still convinced this is just part of a plot to get her bound and loyal... only to strike her down and receive his Darth title from his Master.

He's seducing the audience just as much as Osha. I feel a left hook is coming.

[thehollowprince]

My theory for what really happened during the fire on Brendock is that Mother Koril turned on Mother Aniseya for allowing Osha to choose to leave. Some kind of coup happened amongst the coven, which is why Aniseya's body was found separately from the rest of the witches.

I'm also guessing that the coven put another mind-whammy on either Torbin or Kelnacca, which is why in one of the trailers we see the latter leaping into battle against the former, lightsabers lit.

This turned into a very big thing and we haven't been shown the whole picture yet. It wasn't just Mae starting a fire.

[tremendouskoalachild]

if Qimir is a Sith then he's the funniest motherfucker in the galaxy. all the legends Banites are either 100% hidden or have high status day jobs - politicians, bankers, successful businessmen, scientists, engineers. and then there's this little homeless guy running around trying to discreetly give pointers to his clueless apprentice who sees him as an annoying coworker.

[moonssugar]

okay so planet khofar from the acolyte. my bio loving brain immediately theorized that those giant trees in the background could be a clonal colony because of their uniformity and density, also because they've pushed other tree species out leaving the ones in the valley. they look like a mixture of baobab and redwood to me with some rain forest tree species inspiration as well. even cooler that a tree in a rain forest like environment is clonal, thats less common and most trees in those kinds of environments disperse seeds instead