#the acolyte liveblog

[cogentranting]

Qimir distinguishes himself by being the first sith we've seen to really bring that "sun's out, guns out" energy.

[lunar-system]

the acolyte e5 liveblog

uh fuck we are actually killing people here

like, a light saber is a lethal-lethal weapon all of a sudden

which makes total sense but is not the TONE i'm used to in star wars

pip is a flashlight<3

as amazingly many annoying jedi qualities yord has he is also actually good at following orders. surprisingly good, considering he has such big ego. but i suppose he respects the jedi order that much.

mae and padawan are fighting nooooO!!!! girls!!!

"under arrest for the fire that killed your family" that was an oopsie from the padawan whats-her-name

baddie: "and let you read my thoughts?" that is honestly a red flag that sol just does it whenever it benefits him. cop behaviour.

"what master hides his face from his pupil?" "you tell me" OOOOOHHHH BURN OF THE CENTURY. sol got angy

jecki is the padawan's name!

"jecki is a jedi and can take care of herself" NO she's a padawan and the last padawan that got involved with mae eventually killed himself! god!

i know it's stage sword fighting but based on the efficiently the baddie killed the other jedis either sol is extremely good OR the baddie does not actually want to kill him

"he gets into a jedi's head" now that's interesting. really, if the jedi allowed other cultures religions organisation to use the force how many more uses for it could they develop?

pls pls pls evil guy don't kill jecki like you killed all those unnamed sidecharacteeeers

"Mae, you can learn from this padawan. She's a loyal pupil" god he's bitchy

JECKI WITH TWO SABERS GO GIRL

(if a saber can cut the handle of another sabel, that seems like a tactic everyone would utilise all of the time. but maybe it's because the jedi play a fair game and that's not very sportsmanlike.)

thank you light department for lighting this night forest with reasonable brightness

master to mae: "you've always been weak." does no other order after the coven ever take social bonds seriously? like if mae is interested that her lost lost sister is alive shouldn't that be taken seriously?

master almost got beheaded by jecki there. honestly good for her

WHICH SIDE WILL MAE FIGHT FOR naaaahhh she's off to the woods again. based

jecki saved mae?? from master skewering her? asdkljghaldkjgh

jecki/mae fics? pls?

thank you for giving them all different colour sabers, very pleasing

bugs as environmental warfare? yes please

jecki is too brave for her own good pls beby don't jump after him like that

THE HELMET

JECKY NO

JEEECKYYY NOOO I JUST LEARNED YOUR NAME

jecky noooo………..

secondary lightsaber surprise was cool, mirroring jecki having two swords earlier, but at what price

there you are, evil manny <3 what a cool entrance

He is legit scary not gonna lie

and hot

"was that its name" EVIL MANNY NO!!!

"she was a child." "you brought her here." Sol. he's not wrong. Jecki was a child. Like the other padawan.

lightsaber held against a head like a gun feels. deeply wrong to how star wars uses them. which is the point. well done.

"jedi like you might call me sith" so i now next to nothing about extended star wars lore but like is this the origin story of the sith? or is that like just anyone who uses jedi powers wrong? like christian vs pagan?

"i don't make the rules. the jedi do. and the jedi says i can't exist." okay no wonder this is so well liked as a queer show. he might be evil but this is a very queer take.

YORD??!!! YOU TOO??!!! I JUST CALLED YOU ANNOYING BUT I THOUGHT WE WOULD HAVE MORE TIME AND YOU WOULD REDEEM YOURSELF AND I WOULD LEARN TO LIKE YOU AND YOU JUST GOT KILLED ON CAMERA

I am shook i did not expect this to be this violent show. not a bump to a head and waking up a couple hours later? no! straight up murder!

this evil manny is more evil than i thought

aaaand mae is off to the woods again

mae stunned her… for yord. who is dead. who i called annoying and who is now dead.

okay kill the last remining jedi without weapons then mister evil manny if it so important to you

(where did yord know evil-manny from tho? "it's you"?)

"I've accepted my darkness. What have you done with yours?" evil-manny is consistently given the best two-liners in this show, these keep on giving one after the another

fuck sol looks so sad what a spot-on casting

the bugs straight-up take him???

pip too

but even thought this edition of star wars kills people I have to believe not even this one would kill the purposefully cutesy robot. right? right???

and the sisters are alone. but the rift is just too big. the misunderstandiiiiiing

…osha didn't just… die? too? did she?? oh lord. please be just gently knocked out. like people should be in a star war

pip is saved, yey!

Welp. Mae is in.

Bazil knows.

And Osha lives.

[across-stars]

''they're not here for me.'' okay rn my thoughts are Sol will kill Qimir, Vernestra will see this. How to defeat a Jedi without a weapon? Have his fellow Jedi turn against him

[americankimchi]

aight im 6 minutes in and this is already giving me that wonderful star wars-typical headache. like okay. ur teling me a jedi (master presumably? i'm not too familiar with high republic chars so she could be a knight. seems unlikely though) with all that training got done in by a single knife. girl what is your lightsaber for. or your other hand. YOU HAVE TWO AT YOUR DISPOSAL, CAN YOU NOT MULTITASK?

was this a dream sequence. is there gonna be like a GOTCHA moment coming up. oh no she is picking up her throwing knives and walking out of the establishment. okay. cool. the jedi combat training modules are in shambles i GUESS

[thewingedwolf]

loved the new acolyte episode. the way it plays with the nuances in the jedi by having indara refuse to get involved bc she wants to do things by the book vs sol who feels this connection to osha, this fear for her well-being and feels that’s more important than any rules. both sides getting angry and paranoid and it leading to aniseya, sol, and torbin reacting emotionally & violently. sol refusing to fight korli because he KNOWS he fucked this up. sol willing to accept the consequences but indara, like sol & the witches, is trying to put this child’s well-being over some arbitrary rule. it’s so good and such a good demonstration of both how the jedi council works to stop conflict and how it is completely unprepared to deal with natural human emotion and error.

and of course, as expected, mae is not The Evil Twin. she sets the fire on accident, it spins out of control, and she’s held into this anger for so long because it’s a justified anger! has it helped her? no! but it’s guarded her heart against the overwhelming grief of losing her entire culture in a moment. and then there’s osha, who has no idea the events she’s set into motion - all she wants is the room to figure out who she is without everyone’s expectations weighing her down!! she’s just a kid!!!!!!

[shield-and-saber]

hot take, but jedi master orin darhga & padawan enya keen are just yord and jecki like 200 years before they were yord and jecki

that one concept about soulmates being reincarnated (tho i personally see jecki and yord as platonic soulmates), where sometimes their lives are inextricably bound together from start to end, but sometimes they only ever meet once to simply lend a helping hand, to save a life, to be a comfort in a time of need. and the fact that [spoiler] through his death, orin (and his saber) saved enya's life is like a fulfillment of that interview where charlie said to dafne "i'm really sad that i didn't get to at least try to save you"

it's okay, yord. you saved her 200 years ago on dalna. and i'm sure in another 200 years, she'll be the one to save you

edit: I FORGOT THE MOST IMPORTANT THING, ENYA'S BLADE IS YELLOW AND ORIN'S IS GREEN, I'M THROWING UP

spoilers/text from cataclysm under the cut:

[rivercule]

How do you spend seven weeks somewhere seeking signs of life and never bother to check out the giant fortress within walking distance of your campsite?

[cmbdragon98]

It was a mistake to try figuring out why people are so hesitant about the new star wars show.

The dudebros are reactionary, and only know how to repeat like, one joke based off of the beginning quotes of the trailer, ad infinitum.

Portions of tumblr star wars enjoyers are Too hung up on the whole..... anti/pro jedi mindset, falling into their own weird reactionary pitfall.

Fools, all of you.

Have you no simple adoration for Carrie-Anne Moss??? Dafne Keen??? Amandla Stenberg??? Fuck ton of lightsabers? The one cute alien youngling? What looks like a Star Wars mystery whodunit?

Fuck, you know what. You guys can just watch Star Wars Holiday Special (1978) eight times. Oh my god. I'm so over it.

[ver0sha]

me on my knees pleading for qimir to just fondly touch osha's cheek

[the-director]

Reaction to the second episode of acolyte:

Wow. There is. So much Child abuse. Someone make an intergalactic cps for fucks sake. I think the twins were failed by every adult figure in their life.

[hayden-christensen]

NOT THE CLIFFHANGER?!?????

[cogentranting]

LOVE the concept of a Jedi master who gets carsick. Fantastic character building.

[lunar-system]

the acolyte e7 liveblog

back in the past. this one is going to hurt.

a real setup for a tragedy. yes, osha should have followed the rules and stay inside the fortress to not be seen. no, there was never gonna be a way to make her obey. she had to go. it was inevitable.

climbing? in those robes? sol, you are insane

HE WENT ALL THE WAY IN THE FORTRESS SOOOOLLL NOOO

"we should return to the ship and ask the council for guidance" yes pls

"they do not treat the girls like children" you were right about that sol. they did not.

as a jedi, sol's weakness was his empathy. ironically that's also what made him so dangerous

mother aniseya had the upper hand when she got torbin under her power. but osha had power over her mother. nothing else could have swayed her. but it was inevitable

was it torbin? who caused the destruction? because he was humiliated?

"i worry she is not safe." it is true that osha was being almost forced to become a witch with the coven. at the same time it feels bad to hear sol echo the "think of the children!" sentiment that is so often used against queerness. he is the representative of the hegemonic power here. and he worries if the kids of the minority are truly safe with their family

"who is protecting this child if not the jedi?" again, a very "i know what's best for this minority" attitude from a representative of a powerful organisation

and at the same time, osha was not having good time at home. she was pressured. and at the same time she was loved. gahhh it's complex

"do not confuse what osha wants with you want" didn't we hear this sentiment echoed somewhere earlier in the series? i forgor

i am so scared to see what happened in young mae's test i don't know why but i am

"everyone must be sacrificed to fullfill their destiny" maeee nooo was it you who lead the jedi astray? you who are so proud of your people! you said those words proudly! and did not know how they sounded like to the outsider! mae I'm so sorry!

shit. the fact that there are no other children really makes it look like they were all child sacrifice before the twins.

i like this indara.

and the council made a reasonable decision not to separate the twins.

"do not alter this little girl's destiny because you have formed an emotional attachement to her." tooo laaaateeeee

"i want to do what's best for osha." you don't get to decide that." sol is such a weird combination of a genuinely caring person and a toxic parent who "knows best."

everything seems so good at this point. so is it something about the twins creation that twisted the jedi knickers so bad?

they are one soul!!

TORBIN YOU FOOL DON'T RUIN YOUR OWN LIFE

ironically, if mother aniseya hadn't encouraged torbin to ask for what he wants, he would not be doing this. They would have listened to the council's orders and left them alone. But because mother aniseya tried to scare them away, he accidentally gave torbin the courage to disobey.

oh shit fight-mother takes mae's side. oh shit war-mommy escalates the situation quiiickly. oh shit they believe the jedi are attacking.

MAE DIDN'T MEAN TO START THE FIRE MAE BABYYYY

Sol attacked an unarmed person. Noble intentions. Mother Aniseya is dead, killed by Sol. Fuck.

was it mae's fire that caused the explosions?

torbin's scar came from a possessed wookie!

did. did indara kill them all. just like that.

Sol made the fucking CHOICE to drop Mae. This is so much worse.

So. It was not… intentionally malicious from the jedi's part. I had started to believe more of Mae's story: that jedi is a colonising force that intentionally assimilates children. Well. The council had made a decision not to do that. So there is some understanding there. Still, the jedi managed to destroy a whole culture by being careless. It was the individuals unintented and ill-adviced decisions that led to this. An inevitable tragedy that could have been prevented in a countless little ways. And at the same time not.

Torbin has it the worst. He is too young. He will never recover.

Sol is older, but he is too soft for a jedi. He will carry a heavy burden.

An how endlessly cruel to turh osha against mae!

[across-stars]

uh-oh i already thought it was strange that the fire Mae started could have such enormous consequences, but now it seems like Torbin or maybe even Sol were responsible perhaps

[americankimchi]

EVERYONE SHUT THE FUCK UP THAT'S MY FUCKING HOUSE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[millicentthecat]

Episode 7 Acolyte thoughts.

First of all, I really don't think this version of events was even different enough from the other version to justify going over the same events again. It was boring and, at times, nonsensical.

Same bullshit as ever: all the violence is shown to be initiated by those bad scary indigenous pagans. Never mind that the Jedi invaded their homes and threatened to take their children. No, that's rational! Understandable even! They were just doing science and then concerned about children's safety! That's what the show is telling us when they assure us Sol's mistake was just human error, that the whole institution of the Jedi had decided not to take the kids at all. Except--why then is Indara suddenly on board with abducting Osha and lying about what happened? This comes from nowhere. Is she protecting Sol and Torbin? But why? Because Sol had feelings for Osha, enough to try to take responsibility for her? And this has moved Indara, who is so caring? Weird how all the Jedi are super caring and compassionate but also calm and rational. Except maybe the one kid who wanted to go home and leave things be.

The story leaves it ambiguous whether Osha and Mae actually were in danger. There's an implication of human sacrifice that we can only believe is a false conclusion if we believe Mother Aniseya's POV. There's so much going on here--the way the Zabrak witch is burning to fight, the way all the other witches just fall down dead when they can't mind-control Kelnacca. These witches are very much being presented as the villains in this story, and we're supposed to be ok with that because the Jedi are imperfect heroes and Osha actually wants to be one. Never mind what Mae wants, what any of these indigenous witches want. Their free will isn't important in this story. They are not The Main Character. It just feels infuriatingly like colonialist apologia to me--and the fucked up thing is, people are mad because they think it paints the Jedi in a bad light. I hate to tell you but it's the same light they've always been in. Star Wars is a very weird canon if your escapist fantasy is, like mine, imagining a government that is actually good.