Review: The Acolyte, "The Acolyte" | Season 1, Episode 8
Sympathy for the Sith
“See you in hell, Jedi.”
I live in the Valley of the Sun, better known as Phoenix, Arizona. At this time of year, when it is painfully hot all day long, there’s not a ton to do outside. But it’s summertime, and Phoenix is home to last year’s National League champions, the Arizona Diamondbacks. I am, among other things, a die-hard baseball fan, and one of the nice twists of fate in my life is that I’ve finally gotten my wife and my older son to get even vaguely interested in baseball, to the point of seeing a few games in person this year. As fate would have it, we attended a game this past weekend, on a special promotional evening: Star Wars Night. What that largely meant was that the team had special designs on its Jumbotron of players from the home and away teams themed to the world of Star Wars, along with appearances from some local Jedi cosplayers, fans dressed as characters from the franchise, etc.
There was also, naturally, a giveaway. (If you are not a sports person, please note that whenever there’s a big theme night, no matter the game being played, there is always a giveaway.) This time around, it was a bobblehead of one of the Diamondbacks players in a Star Wars-themed getup, specifically as a Stormtrooper. Although my wife and I were happy to get the limited-edition bobbleheads, I couldn’t help but muse out loud and wonder what the promotional process was like. Did the player in question ask to be designed as a Stormtrooper? Was that a decision made by whatever marketing team was involved? I just couldn’t stop thinking about the basic question: if you’re going to get your own giveaway item, why would you want to be dressed like a Space Nazi?
As I watched “Episode 8,” which is clearly meant to be just a season, not a series finale, I kept thinking about the giveaway and about that basic question. Now, we don’t see any Stormtroopers in the action-packed finale, but The Acolyte is as interested here in depicting the slow-burn origins of the Sith as it is in attempting to deconstruct the Jedi. And in showing us how a Sith like Qimir (or whatever his name is, since the captions continue to refer to him as the “Stranger”) can lure Osha to the Dark Side of the Force, The Acolyte is challenging the preconceived notion that the Sith are all automatically bad and the Jedi are all automatically good. On one hand, this is an admirable notion and I do genuinely applaud Leslye Headland and the writing team for trying to push at these ideas. I cannot deny that The Acolyte feels different from the other Star Wars shows, and that’s better than the alternative.