The Acolyte
Lee Jung-jae as Sol is A+. A precursor to Liam Neeson’ Qui-Gon Jinn. Check.
Charlie Barnett as Yord, aka “but what if a Jedi Knight were a tool?,” is a great call. Even from the commercials you could see the stilted self-regard, which out of context presented as CW-quality acting, but in context is a nice in-universe joke. The Jedi are the worst! And Yord is the worst of the worst.
I’m fine with the twins plot, not least given the Sith’s Rule of Two and the Light and Dark sides of the Force. Already in the first episode we’re hearing about this, plus the episode titles make the subtext text. Will Amandla Stenberg’s characters be anything more than a literal outworking of this metaphor on screen? TBD.
I’m curious as to the show’s depiction of the Jedi’s inner workings. Are they sclerotic and bureaucratic? Or democratic and therefore unhurried (if possibly too slow to meet the urgency of the moment)? If the latter, then they are more like the Ents, and thus to be admired. If the former, then we’re back with Qui-Gon and d-e-c-a-d-e-n-c-e. But if the former because the latter, well, then you’re just making Palpatine’s argument for him.
I do not mind at all (unlike Alan Sepinwall) that the decadence, sclerosis, and institutional blindness on evidence in the prequels is already evident here, a century before the Empire. These things takes time. Moreover, Qui-Gon will be born some fifty years after the events of this show, and there will be living memory of whatever transpires in the rest of the series when he’s being trained as a child in Coruscant. I am eager to see whether Leslye Headland et al can make thematic or narrative hay of these matters beyond “Palpatine-versus-the-Jedi avant la lettre.”
See further Timothy Burke on the difficulty of nailing down the Sith’s concrete motivations in Star Wars lore.
There are intriguing hints. “Our political enemies” says one Jedi to another. Who are they? What do they want? What is their brief? But these questions raise a whole new set of questions, as does The Acolyte as a whole…
Boil them all down this: How is it possible that the Jedi kept the Republic from war for a thousand years? Remember, Star Wars is not a Star Trek: this isn’t meant to be utopian. Life isn’t perfect. Greed and lust and wrath and gluttony and pride and all the other sins prevail; the Republic is not the Federation. This isn’t communism minus Lenin and Stalin. It’s just ordinary civilizational life projected onto the stars. How, I repeat, was there absolutely zero war—no conflict beyond the local, the petty, the private—for a full millennium? Across how many solar systems in an entire galaxy? Even contained on a single planet? None, zero, zilch? Are we committed, canonically, to this necessarily and strictly being true? For real?
Now think about the Jedi. They are a tiny religious minority of celibate wizards who forsake emotional attachment, are taken from their families while very young to be trained by a secret order on the galactic capital planet, wield magic spells at a whim, brandish laser swords, and carry an imperial (sorry, republican-senatorial) remit to investigate, subdue, arrest, and (if necessary) kill any and all suspected of breaking the law or making trouble. In effect, Jedi are medieval monks, knights, and sheriffs, all in one. They leave family behind, they neither marry nor have sex nor have children or households, yet they possess occult powers that intimidate and discipline a galactic population of trillions. How, I ask once again, did such a tiny, terrifying, and unrepresentative group preserve, much less enforce, peace and justice in the galaxy? As Obi-Wan remarks at one point in the prequels, the Jedi are not soldiers. Who wouldn’t feel burning resentment at these magical universe policeman? “The Jedi live in a dream,” the acolyte’s master says. I’m inclined to agree.
I failed to mention that, in this galaxy, there is no God, only the Force. No one worships the Force, not exactly. The Force has servants and students (a la Chirrut Îmwe), but the Force itself is neither good nor evil, only the balance of the two. Why should any ordinary people “believe in” the Force, or respect or admire or even care about it? And by extension, the Jedi?
I suppose a postmodern debunking of Obi-Wan’s “more civilized age” as just so much nostalgic hokum could be interesting. But I’d prefer a deeper answer on this score. Even during the Jedi’s (and by extension, the Republic’s) high tide of peace, politics was never extinguished. What was going on? How did they preserve it? By what maneuverings? With what shenanigans? Who, after all, initiated the Jedi doctrines about detachment, much less celibacy? Are they necessary? Or are they part of the problem? And thus part of what led to Sidious, Maul, Anakin, Snoke, Ren? Could Rey’s new Jedi order correct for these past mistakes, as Rian Johnson’s film implied? If Disney makes good on a new series of films focusing on her efforts—as well as a biblical epic, directed by James Mangold, depicting the Jedi’s origins in the distant past—could these form a kind of narrative thread, even an inclusio, centering less on Luke and Leia’s family drama and more on the High Republic’s failures, the Jedi’s decadence, and Palpatine and Qui-Gon’s shared critique of the status quo? In order too forestall repeating history, which would doom the galaxy (and moviegoers) to an endless cycle of Sith/Dark-versus-Jedi/Light?
Fat chance. But in theory, it could work.
