When The Acolyte was first announced, the most exciting part of the project was that it was finally bringing the High Republic era to the screen. As we near the end of the first season, though, there’s something I’m enjoying even more. Much of the 21st-century Star Wars entries have been about circular storytelling: the constant, endless cycle of tension between the dark and the light. The Acolyte, however, falls into the smaller yet powerful group of stories that prefer to interrogate what “dark” and “light” really mean — and what strong emotions, like fear or desire, mean in that context, too.
Moral Ambiguity Has Rarely Been a Star Wars Strength
When most people think of Star Wars, they boil it down to its simplest terms: Light Side vs. Dark Side. That binary thinking is replicated in-universe time and time again. You’re either a Jedi, pure of heart and mind, or a Sith who succumbs to bad feelings. One could argue — and many, many fans do — that the story’s moral should be that the Jedi and Sith both are wrong. You cannot let hate and anger overwhelm you, of course. But neither should you be asked to put up a wall between yourself and deep feelings. And yet, the “win” for so many characters, at least in the “mainline” stories told in the movies and TV shows, is becoming some flavor of Jedi.
This has become more and more pronounced in the 21st-century Star Wars entries. The original trilogy set up this dynamic, sure, but it did more than that. It also gave us characters like Lando Calrissian and, of course, Han Solo. These are characters who have no time for lofty philosophical debates. They’re too busy for binaries — they’re just trying to survive, and that’s not always a pretty sight.
The prequel trilogy is a straight-up Shakespearean tragedy, but much of the nuance gets lost in the effort to create connective tissue to the original trilogy. The sequels started to prod at complexity but ran scared from the most interesting ideas (more on that in a moment). And the Disney+ shows have been more concerned with nostalgia and rehashing old beats. The Mandalorian started strong but fell victim to callbacks and the overwhelming cuteness (and marketability) of Baby Yoda. Obi-Wan Kenobi gave us great insights into a broken, grieving ex-Jedi and a morally complex Imperial, but those arcs were somewhat uneven.
The Acolyte, in contrast, hews closer to the moral ambiguities of Star Wars TV’s masterpiece, Andor. Unsurprisingly, given its setting, it also draws on the tradition of the High Republic’s expanded canon, which has always played more with these ideas of puncturing the Jedi’s infallibility. At first, the show tricks us into thinking it’s a classic setup: light vs. dark, symbolized by a pair of twins. The deeper we go, though, the more we realize the kind of story we’re really in.
No one is fully light or dark. The Jedi adhere to their ways so strictly that they cause more pain than they relieve. They say things like “Thank you for your cooperation” while leaving destruction and hurt in their wake. Qimir positions himself to be deeply tempting to Osha while blatantly trying to “corrupt” her to the Dark Side, but there’s an authenticity and vulnerability in his conversations with her, too. As in Andor, where our protagonists engage in the ugly side of rebellion, The Acolyte wants to shatter simple conceptions of good vs. evil.
Democratizing the Force
As part of that binary, Star Wars has taught us there are two sides to the Force. There’s the light, bound by the arcane rules of the Jedi, and the dark, driven by the selfish cruelty of the Sith. If you don’t embrace the Jedi ways, you “fall.” Period. Rarely do we see anyone outside this formally-trained rivalry use the Force (I will die mad about the squandered potential of Force Broom Boy at the end of The Last Jedi!).
The Acolyte takes it further by introducing us to the order of witches who raise Mae and Osha. They’re not Sith, but they connect with the Force differently than Jedi do, which is unacceptable to the Jedi. It’s hard not to see parallels between evangelizing versus indigenous religions. The Jedi insist that only their way is the “right” way to connect to the Force (or the divine or the spiritual) and villainize — or at the very least mistrust — those who choose differently. It’s intriguing that, as Qimir attempts to persuade Osha to join him, he lists “loss” and “desire” alongside typically “bad” emotions like “anger” and “fear.”
Of course, there’s a flip side to this. Qimir brushes off Osha’s identification of the “Dark Side” as mere “semantics.” He may be telling the truth, at least partially; he clearly has both physical and mental scars from the brutal and isolating techniques of Jedi training. He suggests that abandoning the Jedi way makes him “finally free” — but free to do what? We haven’t seen him do anything heroic. He kills, casually and without regret. He’s definitely not a “good” guy. Again, The Acolyte isn’t offering easy answers, and I, for one, appreciate that.
The Acolyte, Andor, and Desire
“Below the surface of consciousness are powerful emotions. Anger. Fear. Loss… Desire.”
Like its massive-franchise cousins at Marvel, Star Wars has fallen into the “everyone is beautiful and no one is horny” trap. Gone are the days of electric frisson between Han and Leia. “You like me because I’m a scoundrel.” “You could use a good kiss.” “I happen to like nice men.” “I guess you don’t know everything about women yet.”
Seriously, go rewatch Empire Strikes Back. They are constantly angry-horny, and it’s a goddamn delight.
These days, everything is sanitized, including the characters’ emotions. No one feels big feelings — that’s the path to the Dark Side, apparently. The sequel trilogy offered so many opportunities for romance and desire… and promptly snuffed out every last one. The Disney+ shows have mostly followed in those same footsteps: no one yearns or wants.
Then came Andor. Characters have a variety of sex lives, messy romantic feelings, and conflicting desires. They’re human, in other words. Sure, there’s no star-crossed Han-and-Leia-level romance (Vel and Cinta are probably the closest thing to it), but they feel things, and the audience is told we can, too.
The Acolyte goes even further, taking the idea of being “seduced” to the Dark Side literally. Episode 6 is basically the start of an enemies-to-lovers fanfic, and I mean that as a compliment! There’s the thirst-trap scene of Qimir bathing while Osha threatens him, and her eyes flicker to, uh, not his face. But it’s more than that. It’s the seductive, insidious way he connects with her deeper yearnings. He understands her, he’s like her, and he represents freedom to her — or at least that’s what he wants her to believe right now.
Put together, The Acolyte and Andor tap into something quite powerful in storytelling and fanbases. The options don’t have to be “sexless action figures” or “epic romance.” People can just want someone for all sorts of complicated reasons. Chemistry doesn’t have to be sidelined. Desire doesn’t have to be icky or taboo — not in the story universe and not in discussions of the show itself. We live in an age of such hyper-sanitized franchise media that Twitter lights up over a sleeveless costume and held gazes. I myself (who frequently nopes out on “villainous boy is seductive and soft towards heroic girl” ships) wrote on Twitter just after Episode 6 aired:
In other words, give the people what they want! And what they want is feelings (and the occasional dive into canon-adjacent/Legends lore).
Real Sets, Real Feelings
Contributing to that bland same-ness is also the visual style of Disney+-era Star Wars. It’s no coincidence that the shows that seem the least interested in using “the Volume” (the high-tech giant “egg” used for creating virtual sets) are also the ones most interested in complexity and realism for their characters. Like Andor, The Acolyte relies heavily on practical sets for key scenes. (It uses volume in some capacity.)
It feels quite symbolic, to be frank. Star Wars has often struggled with crafting three-dimensional characters rather than archetypes. The “hero’s journey” nature of the storytelling can make that a challenge at times. That’s the power of shows like The Acolyte and, before it, Andor. They’re not interested in focus-grouped, polished-and-shiny storytelling. They’d rather dig into the textures of it all, and their physical productions reflect that.
It’s all part of the same idea: that feeling complex emotions doesn’t have to mean pure darkness. Sometimes, I think about how the climax of Return of the Jedi involves Luke coming to terms with “dark” feelings. I think about how the act that saved the galaxy involves an act in which love (Anakin’s love for his son), anger (over Palpatine torturing Luke), and violence (murdering Palpatine) are inextricably entwined.
Perhaps that’s what we should take away from The Acolyte for now. Victory isn’t about moral purity or absolutes (cue the irony of “only a Sith deals in absolutes”). Instead, victory — or peace, or happiness, or freedom — is about understanding one’s self and coming to terms with everything within us: dark and light, anger and joy, desire and fear. And maybe, just maybe, feeling our feelings can be our strength, not a weakness. It certainly seems like that’s true of The Acolyte.
First Featured Image Credit: ©Lucasfilm