The Acolyte Finale Spoiler Recap
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Holy shit. How are we feeling, The Acolyte fam?
I usually do these recaps the next morning, after having a chance to tweet through my zoomies then sleep on it, but I wanted to get a jump on this while the episode was fresh in my head. Admittedly, this will probably get finished in the morning, but at least these first thoughts are coming to you from the immediate aftermath of the eighth and final episode in The Acolyte season 1 — because I refuse to believe we aren’t getting a second season.
That said…I don’t even know what to say. What can you say about a show that both managed to subvert your every expectation — expectations that were admittedly very high — and also at the same time tell a solid story that actually followed a logical progression. This is a high I have not felt since The Last Jedi. Arguably it is a higher high, not because of the relative quality of either product but because this time I have a community to scream over it with.
If I have one regret of the season, one major regret, it’s that all the episodes weren’t a leisurely 45 minutes as the finale, also titled “The Acolyte”, was. Then again these already lengthy recaps would have taken me even longer to do so perhaps it’s for the best, at least from a time management front. So with that, let’s dive in!
The episode opens in Qimir’s cave, with Osha wearing the helmet. He walks in to find her wearing it, and seems happy that she took him up on the suggestion, but the happiness is short-lived, when she suddenly appears to be in pain. Qimir reacts at once, dropping to a knee and reaching for her, but something is keeping him from reaching her. Something dark. We see him retreat into a darker version of the cave — only in his mind, not unlike when Aniseya popped up in Torbin’s head — while in the real world his eyes have gone creepy and black. Something is stopping him from reaching Osha — likely Osha herself — but he leans into the darkness and manages to pry the helmet off her head.
So what did she see in there? Mae, hand outstretched, killing Sol without a weapon. Qimir is revitalized by this, realizing Mae has the power to kill without a weapon after all, and immediately prepares to head out after her. Osha protests that this isn’t fixed, and she wants to stop Mae before she can kill Sol. Qimir points out she can’t leave without a ship, but Osha counters that she’s the one who knows the destination. They agree to go together and see who gets to Mae first.
Speaking of where Mae is, she’s currently hovering over Brendok with Sol, who tells her he’s going to contact Vernestra and the Jedi in order to show them the vergence on Brendok. The twins both being alive will help him prove the power of the vergence. Mae asks if this was what he killed her mother for, and Sol explains that the death of the entire coven, and Mae’s near death as well, was all an accident.
Needless to say this does not go over well. Mae challenges Sol for not telling Osha the truth, stalling long enough to engage Pip’s screwdriver to undo her bindings. She asks Sol why he blamed her for the destruction, and it’s clear he still kinda does, reminding her she did start the fire and locked everyone in, to boot. Mae tells him she only did that because the Jedi invaded in the first place, and that the deaths are on them, but Sol maintains they were right to intervene.
Buddy, you are making it so hard to root for you right now. At least he says he tried to save them both.
Sol starts to tell Mae what he suspects, that the two of them aren’t twins after all, but Mae breaks free before he can, and hops into the escape vessel. She takes off through the asteroid-filled ring of one of Brendok’s moons, with Sol in hot pursuit. Sol looks ready to fire on her, but before he can Bazil (my baby!) makes it to the cockpit and tampers with the controls enough to stop Sol. Whether the intent was to just stop Sol from killing her in cold blood or to destabilize both of them enough that they land on Brendok anyway, I’m not sure, I don’t speak Tynnan. But Bazil got what he was hoping for as both make landfall.
On Coruscant, Vernestra gets a visit from Senator Rayencourt, the senator who we learned is looking to form an independent enquiry of the Jedi Order. We get another reference to Vernestra’s hyperspace headaches and I just love when The Acolyte is book references. Rayencourt asks Vernestra why she’s decided to start running a secret murder investigation, and Vernestra protests that it’s not secret, it’s just internal since it concerns murdered Jedi, and there is no larger threat. Rayencourt asks if this means the suspect is also a Jedi, and naturally Vernestra has no good answer for him.
She doesn’t manage to dismiss him as effectively as she might have hoped, though. He explains that his efforts to conduct an independent review of the Jedi don’t stem from a personal matter, but rather because he believes the Jedi operate unchecked. It’s not even their use of the Force, but because he believes suppressing emotions will inevitably cause one of them to snap. Well, he’s not technically wrong, but also don’t think this is something he has to worry about in his lifetime. Vernestra protests that his sentiments aren’t shared by the senate, and he tells her that’s because most of them still hero-worship the Jedi, without seeing the Order for who and what they truly are. He finally takes her hint to leave, but informs her he’s told the Chancellor of her actions, and she must report to a Senate tribunal to provide an update.
Osha and Qimir prepare to head out in search of Sol and Mae, with Osha still refusing to tell Qimir where they’re actually going, lest he leave her behind. He bristles at her suggestion that he’s a “fair” person who will honour the terms of their agreement — go together or not at all — until she reminds him that he kept to his deal with Mae too.
Before they get any further, he tells her she really should be trained and asks if she’d ever consider becoming his student — I love when Star Wars is “you need a teacher” — but she refuses, saying she isn’t like Mae, and he agrees, since Mae didn’t even consider before agreeing to be trained. I know I just made a Reylo joke (and buckle up, there’s going to be so many of those) but wording aside, this scene has a lot more in common with the elevator scene in The Last Jedi than it does with that moment from The Force Awakens. Qimir knows he wants Osha as his student, and likely even senses that she craves that too, but he’s past the hard sell by this point, instead taking the quieter, more seductive approach. And seductive he may be, but I don’t even think he’s playing her, not really. His intentions might be self-serving, but they’re also pretty straightforward, especially in light of things that pop up later in the episode.
One element that might complicate this “relatively honest Qimir” read of things is the sudden appearance of a third being on the island, one who pops up in the shadows of the cave to watch Osha and Qimir fly away. This creepy individual is widely theorized to be Darth Plagueis — though until that’s confirmed I’ll be calling him Darth Creepy Hands — and it really begs the question of what he’s doing there. Is he Qimir’s master? Probably, but if that’s the case, how does he feel about Qimir drawing someone he clearly has such strong feelings for towards the dark side. As I say that, it occurs to me he’s probably fully in support of that, as the strong emotions will probably work more in the dark side’s favour than indifference. And that is officially more words on the subject than Darth Creepy Hands had seconds of screen time so lets move on before I dive further into my conspiracy rabbit hole.
Back on Brendok, we see Sol managed to land in one piece, and reactivates his beacon. With that done, he leaves the ship, and uses the Force to sense his direction, likely in the form of sensing Mae, and heads off into the woods. Though Bazil doesn’t follow him, he does watch Sol leave, sniffing and snuffling as he does. Something’s up, and the adorable tracker knows what it is.
On Coruscant, Vernestra is trying to send a message to someone, likely her ally in the senate that we met last week, when she’s interrupted by Mog, who tells her that Sol’s beacon is back on and that he’s gone to Brendok. She tells Mog to gather knights and prepare her ship. It seems all roads are leading to Brendok.
Osha and Qimir arrive in the skies above Brendok, and I don’t know how much one-sided chatter Osha had to endure on the way over, but all it takes is a “home sweet home” comment from Qimir for her to turn off his controls entirely, bringing them in for a landing by herself near the fortress. Sol sees them arrive as he treks through the fortress’s courtyard, but doesn’t let himself get distracted from his real object: tracking down Mae.
As Osha and Qimir make it to thje bottom of the fortress, Osha tells him the elevator is the only way in. His voice appears in her mind to ask if she’s sure about that, and sure enough, when she turns away from the panel he’s nowhere to be seen. That doesn’t stop Osha from making the most dangerous decision anyone has ever made in any Star Wars ever. She hotwires the elevator to kickstart it back to life, and 16 years after breaking, the door creaks open and she gets in. Obviously nothing goes wrong, but you would simply never catch me in an elevator that had lain dormant for 16 years, even if the controls had been fully intact all along.
Sol continues to wander the fortress, haunted by his memories of that night 16 years ago. His search is interrupted when Qimir appears before him, in the Darth Teeth mask once again, and thanks Sol for leading him to Mae. The two draw their sabers and begin to fight. Though the duel eventually makes it out into the courtyard, I want to take a minute to appreciate how cool the close quarters choreography is in this scene. Sol vows to destroy Qimir, who counters that “she” will probably destroy Sol first. Is it Mae? Is it Osha? I think we all know by now. Well, all of us except Sol.
Meanwhile, Mae managed to find her own way into the fortress. In a pair of shots so reminiscent of Ben Solo in the pit, it can only be deliberate, Mae climbs out of the same chasm she fell into all those years ago, and stumbles upon her and Osha’s childhood bedroom. It’s there that Osha finds her, and the sisters finally have their overdue confrontation about what really happened that night the coven was lost. Osha still blames Mae for the destruction, but Mae tells her that Sol lied by placing the blame where he did. I agree Sol isn’t coming off the best here — and he will continue to dig that hole for himself — but Mae, you did, in fact, start that fire. The rest isn’t your fault, but that bit is.
Osha tells Mae that all Sol did was try to teach her to accept that Mae was the reason her home was destroyed — see what I mean about that hole — but because Osha never could turn her grief and rage into acceptance, she ultimately failed to become a Jedi, the one thing she wanted. Mae has nothing to say to the suggestion that she got what she wanted in the end as Osha never became a Jedi, but she does finally tell Osha that Sol is the one who killed Aniseya, and by omitting the truth, he has been lying to her all along. With nowhere to put that anger, Osha rushes Mae, and the two of them break into a fight, only ending when Mae spots the Jedi ship arriving overhead and is gone before Osha realizes that she has.
Sol is more than a match for Qimir as they continue to fight in the courtyard as they spy the Jedi ship arriving. He might change his tune later, but right now he’s confident they aren’t there for him. Their fight comes to an end, or at least a standstill, when Sol slices off the emitter from Qimir’s saber, exposing the kyber crystal. Qimir takes his helmet off, and the two finally come face to face. Before Sol can do anything but point his lightsaber at Qimir menacingly, Mae arrives to fight him with her bare hands. She manages to get her hands on his lightsaber, and Qimir immediately pivots back into teacher mode, coaxing her to use her anger against him to complete her journey. She throws the saber to the side, cracking the top and exposing the kyber crystal, and refuses to “complete her training”, instead insisting that Sol be brought before the Jedi High Council to confess his actions and be held responsible for what he did.
See now, this would be a perfect opportunity for Sol to agree with Mae and return to Coruscant to face some consequences. Sure it’s a little unfair for him to take the fall for what the whole Brendok group did — and yes I do hold all of them responsible — but hey, it is what it is. But he doesn’t do any of that. Instead of telling Mae she’s right and he was wrong, he doubles down and insists he was doing the right thing and wanted to protect them both, since they’re not actually twins, they’re the same person. He says that they were created by their mother, using the Force and with help from the vergence on the planet, and that the power to do that at all is extremely rare.
I will grant him the point that yes, the ability to create life out of the Force intentionally does require an extraordinary amount of power. And I can even understand from an academic standpoint being curious, and possibly wary of how such a thing is even possible. But where the Jedi, and Sol in particular, were absolutely in the wrong is the notion that someone in possession of this much power must necessarily be a threat, especially to their loved ones. He wanted to protect them because he sensed they were created through the Force and via the vergence, but how did he not sense that they were loved? Those are his own emotions blinding him to the reality of it, and therein lies the tragedy of the Jedi, the one spelled out so succinctly by Senator Rayencourt. In claiming to be able to control their negative emotions, they instead simply have no way to deal with these very normal emotions when they do arise. It’s why Anakin couldn’t tell anyone his fears for Padmé, its why Obi-Wan chose to live in a cave for a decade, it’s why Luke debated killing his nephew, and why Ben felt disillusioned by Jedi life. It’s why Vernestra- you know what, we’ll get to that later.
Mae finally extracts a confession from Sol, just in time for Osha to arrive and overhear him. With his lightsaber in hand, Osha steps out of the shadows and asks him why he didn’t tell the Jedi if he believed it was the right thing to do. He tells her that he couldn’t prove his vergence theory without Mae, and even just telling Osha would have resulted in the Order sending her away because she was too old to train.
I understand he did what he did because he thought it was best given the circumstances, and I might even be inclined to agree that, given the circumstances it was the right thing to do. But that also begs the question of who is responsible for said circumstances in the first place.
Osha’s heard just about enough, and slowly Force-chokes Sol as Mae and Qimir watch in shock. As she does, the crystal in Sol’s lightsaber, which she still has clutched in her hand begins to shift from blue to red — I can’t believe we actually got a bleeding kyber crystal onscreen. Just before he dies, Sol tells Osha that it’s ok, forgiving her for what she’s doing, and I know we all like to joke about how much I make everything about Ben Solo, but the parallel to Han’s death is just so strong that once again I am forced to believe it was intentional.
I don’t know that Sol came to the planet knowing he was going to die, the way Han did, but the fact that he clearly loves her enough to forgive her for what she’s doing, hoping that absolution will at least stop her soul from fragmenting, speaks volumes. I also don’t know for sure that he ever really realized the full wrongness of what he did, but I do believe in these last moments he at least realized how his actions had hurt her, and understands why she now feels as she does. Even though Sol dies at her hands, Osha is still shaken when it’s all over, and Qimir tries to comfort her. She draws the saber and ignites it, and the blade goes from blue to red — and I might just be imagining that it looks as shaky as Kylo’s did.
The Jedi finally arrive, and the moment Vernestra steps off the ship, she and Qimir sense one another. Vernestra is astonished to find that he’s alive, and Qimir shoves his helmet back on with all the panic of a kid who stayed up late reading with a flashlight, and who just heard their parents in the hall coming to check on them. He also disappears from the courtyard, leaving Mae and Osha alone, but Mae says she knows a way out. Not a moment too soon, as the Jedi are on their way in. Mae takes Osha back to the pit where she fell, and shows her how she survived: an access tunnel about halfway down that leads out of the structure.
Vernestra and co. make it to the courtyard and see Sol’s body, and as they look around Vernestra feels echoes of the fateful night on Brendok, and starts to put a more complete picture together. She sends the rest of the team out to set up a perimeter with Bazil’s help Qimir watches her from the shadows, but as soon as she looks up, sensing him, he’s gone.
Mae and Osha make it to the Bunta tree, and for the first time all season they seem to be on the same page, processing their pain together. The moment doesn’t last long as Qimir shows up and tells them the Jedi will be able to find them. Osha says she’ll explain everything to them, but Qimir and Mae tell her the order will kill her when they find out how powerful she is. Mae asks her what she really wants, and Osha strikes a bargain: if Qimir lets Mae go, she will stay and train with him. Qimir offers to permanently wipe Mae’s memory of himself and Osha to stop the Jedi from finding them, and Mae agrees, not wanting to keep her sister from what she wants a second time.
Osha hands Qimir the saber — one might say, she finally took the hand he offered her — and hugs Mae, promising to find her again one day. Mae gives Qimir the go ahead, and Mae immediately struggles to remember the rest of their dyad rhyme. At least she doesn;t immediately forget who Osha is, as that hug would have then been really awkward.
The Jedi come upon Mae by the tree by herself, and she surrenders right away. She’s taken back to Coruscant in handcuffs and brought before Vernestra, who asks if she knows why she was brought in. Mae says that she was told she killed someone but has no memory of it. Vernestra asks her how much she remembers, and Mae recounts the night on Brendok when the fortress was destroyed and the coven killed, saying someone killed her mother, and she was supposed to tell someone, but doesn’t know who. Vernestra tells her that the memory is from her childhood, and that the man who killed her mother was a Jedi.
Mae initially gets the true sentiment of who Sol was: that he was a kind, compassionate man who made a huge fucking mistake (my words, not hers). The senate committee, however, gets another version of events from Vernestra. She tells them that the four Jedi on Brendok found the coven, and many died following a conflict, with the four of them agreeing to keep the secret. She then tells the senate that when the truth was about to come out, Sol instead killed the other three Jedi to keep them quiet before taking his own life on Brendok.
To which I say: Vernestra, what the fuck happened to you? What would Stellan say? I understand, in a media literacy sense, why she’s saying what she’s saying. In an effort to keep the senate out of Jedi business, she pins the entire conflict on one “rogue Jedi” justifying her reasons for keeping things in house, and hoping to avoid the investigation. This isn’t enough for Rayencourt, who says the investigation must go ahead either way, without even waiting for a senate vote. So was the lie worth it in the end, Vernestra? Again, I don’t feel this is inconsistent with the books purely because Book Vernestra would never. A lot can happen in 5 years, never mind 100 years, but what I want to know now is what the hell happened in that century to make her the way she is?
Vernestra tells Mae that what Sol did twisted his mind, and every action he took after Brendok was justified in his mind as being for Osha’s sake. At the mention of a “sister” Mae is confused, and Vernestra asks her if she knows who “Osha” is. When Mae doesn’t reply, she tells her she’ll make it right in exchange for Mae’s help in finding someone…specifically a former pupil of hers who has now turned to evil.
I knew it, I fucking knew it.
Speaking of said pupil, he and Osha have returned to his mystery planet, and the episode ends with the two of them standing side by side watching the sunrise (or possibly the sunset, but it looks like dawn to me), hand in hand, and holding Sol’s lightsaber between them.
I should say the episode nearly ends there, as a brief scene after this shows Vernestra going to catch up a council member on everything that transpired. But not just any council member. A little green one, to be precise.
For those of us who have spent years wondering what a well-plotted corruption arc would look like in Star Wars, The Acolyte is here to provide. To put it another way, this first season — as I refuse to believe it’s the only season we’ll get — really does answer the question of what would have happened if Rey took Kylo’s hand. The circumstances are different, the language is different, but the arc is the same: when presented with difficult questions and even more difficult truths, its for the heroine to decide if she wants to uphold the status quo anyway, or instead pursue these new truths she’s been presented with instead. In a better Episode IX, Rey might have come to embrace the dark a little more, and embraced her own desires and agency rather than functioning as a vessel for a fight that has little to do with her emotionally. But I am not here to spiral down that tangent as this is already long enough.
What I am here to say is the best thing The Acolyte has done is put these challenging questions about the Jedi and the Force not only to the characters, but also to the audience. No one is inherently 100% wrong or 100% right — except Bazil, he’s an angel — but are instead operating under whatever they believe is right, for better or worse. For Osha, here at the end, the next step in her journey is the first time she is embarking on something with her eyes open and her path unimpeded. She was presented with the truth and she made a choice.
A choice that we need to see explored in Season 2 if there’s any justice at all.
The Acolyte is streaming now on Disney+.
