The Acolyte Spoiler Recap: Teach/Corrupt
If The Acolyte Episode 5 had me screaming and hollering both from the surprise Qimir reveal and also the devastating body count, then Episode 6 has me absolutely sweating, both from everyone suddenly acting suspicious, and from the straight-up sexual tension coming to a gradual boil. It’s emotional whiplash that somehow also actually makes perfect sense, and I am absolutely here for it, so let’s jump right in to Episode 6, “Teach/Corrupt” (and yes, we are back to those dual titles).
When last we saw Osha, Qimir was tucking her in under a little blankie (or possibly his cloak, I honestly had blacked out completely by that point). Now, she wakes up in a spacious cave, lying on a bed, and a quick glance around reveals that someone actively lives here. She also finds that the wound in her side is healed. Whoever brought her here (we know who it was but bear with me) was even thoughtful enough to leave out water and a change of clothes. The jury’s still out on whether him leaving the knife for her to find was also intentional but I’m leaning towards yes.
Dressed in an outfit that evokes Rey’s Ahch-To costume, Osha leaves the cave and finds she’s on an island that’s definitely not Ahch-To but there’s also absolutely no way the visual similarities in both dress and locale are a coincidence. Osha heads down to the beach, and not a moment too soon, as Qimir passes behind her on his way to parts unknown.
Can I also take a moment to say how beautiful the score for this show is and I cannot wait until I can download it for my listening pleasure?
Back on Khofar, or rather over it, Sol tries to get a message out to the Jedi Temple to tell them his whole team is dead. Unfortunately, however, the comms can’t go through clearly, and the response from the Temple is extremely fragmented. RIP Starlight Beacon you would have come in real handy right about now. While he tries to get the message out, Mae wanders the ship, thinking back to her own Jedi assessment 16 years ago. She overhears Sol sending the message and heads to the cockpit, armed with her knife. Sol stops her just in time, asking her to take over the controls while he resets the system.
Down in the common area, Sol tries the time honored IT fix of turning it off and back on again, but for the first time since losing the rest of his team, allows himself to actually break down and grieve, even if he can’t let himself wallow in it for too long. I feel like we don’t often get to see Jedi get frustrated or angry or sad (that being the whole point), but Sol’s breakdown feels more like a logical culmination of everything that just happened, and not so much a hint at that darkness Qimir was alluding to. Though it would be fascinating to see if the way he wears his heart on his sleeve like he does is considered a sign of that darkness by the rest of the order.
But while Sol grieves and Mae sneaks around, the third member of their little crew, Bazil, is hard at work sniffing around and piecing together the puzzle of what happened, even conferring with PIP once he gets him plugged in.
Back on the Unknown-Planet-That-Isn’t-Ahch-To, Osha follows Qimir to his destination — not a sinister lair for nefarious deeds, but to a rock pool, where the Sith has decided it’s time for a much needed bath. I love when Star Wars is hot evil men taking their shirts off. Except he takes more than just that shirt off, and for a moment there I truly thought we were about to get Star Wars’ first butt shot.
She finds his lightsaber on top of his clothes and picks it up, at which point he chooses to reveal that he knew she was behind him the whole time. What follows is a very emotionally charged conversation that I’m tempted to just transcribe here word for word — but I shall resist the urge. After asking whether she had to give up her own saber after leaving the Order, he then shifts into seemingly reading her mind, before revealing that all he’s doing is reading her intentions in her anger. That intention? To kill him where he stands, naked and all (but not before sneaking a look or two at the………other lightsaber).
Osha asks if she was brought here to be his prisoner, and he points out that she’s the one holding the weapon — an exchange I have to single out because of how extremely my shit it is. She asks him if Sol and Mae are dead, and he says he didn’t kill them but points out that she asked him about Sol first, observing he’s more to her than just her one-time Jedi Master.
Speaking of Sol and Mae, the two are still hovering above Khofar. Sol joins Mae as she prepares them to jump into hyperspace, and Sol pulls her into a hug, thanking her for saving him. He then tells her he’s going to face the council to tell them everything. Sol, what exactly happened on Brendok and why is it every time you try to tell the truth about it, the universe interrupts you?
In this case, the interruption comes in the form of the commiunications array, which is back to working just long enough to break Sol’s train of thought for him to walk over, then goes back down again. He asks Mae if she wants to take a look at the system to see if she can figure out the problem — Osha is a meknek after all — and Mae decides the best way out of this is to fake it till she makes it.
On Coruscant, Vernestra is caught up in a political phone call, with a senator telling her that another politician is trying to meddle with the Jedi. If that’s not a sign of things to come, I don’t know what is. I doubt this particular plot point will actually come into play in the series, but it continues to fascinate me to see how far Vernestra has come since she was a teenager, and also how much about her has changed since then. She’s interrupted by Mog, the Padawan trying to communicate with Sol, who relays to her as much as he was able to hear. She tells him to prepare a team to go to Khofar.
Back with Osha and Qimir, she follows him to the cave from the rock pool, asking why it is he sounds like he used to be a Jedi. The answer his simple: he did used to be a Jedi. How long ago? A long time ago. Let’s just put a pin in that one for now. She suggests he brought her to the island for leverage, and he doesn’t confirm or deny that, but does admit that everyone does seem to have a vested interest in her. She counters by telling him that Sol’s strength in the Force is the ability to find people and he will find her too, but Qimir tells her that that’s her strength, not Sol’s.
While I don’t think that’s strictly true, since we’ve seen that skill in play with Sol before, I cannot tell you how healing it is to have the heroine hear that a strength attributed to others is actually a strength all her own. “You don’t just have power, you have his power” is a line from TROS that haunts me to this day, as it cut Rey off right at the knees and attributed all her strength in the Force to a wrinkly raisin hooked up to a claw machine instead of her own inate ability. It was, no exaggeration, one of the most insulting things I’ve ever heard in a Star Wars anything, and Qimir’s assertion that the strength she attributes to others is actually all her own went a long way to healing that. Qimir then offers her the chance to leave, but perhaps intrigued by what he’s putting down, she chooses to stay.
On Sol’s ship, Mae ostensibly goes to fix the problem with the power and finds Pip. Before she can do anything, though, Bazil finds her and charges, attacking her legs as best he can before stomping on her toe and running off — if anything happens to this precious angel I will be inconsolable. Pip gets in on the fun and gets the ship to spray something noxious in Mae’s face. But unlike Bazil, Pip doesn’t have little legs to carry him away, and it’s only too easy for Mae to pick him up and reset him to factory settings. With Pip no longer actively sabotaging her, she’s able to finally fix the power system.
While everyone and everything actively fights Mae, Osha and Qimir return to his cave. She tells him that strength in the Force fades without training, but like everything else, Qimir asserts that this is a Jedi notion, as is the idea that theirs is the only right way.
RIP Qimir, you would have loved Phase 2 of The High Republic.
He tells her that the emotions the Jedi call on her to suppress — anger, fear, loss, and even desire — are another way to access the Force. Osha might know it as the dark side, but that’s all relative really. This whole “fear is the path to the dark side” notion makes sense to an extent. Fear, anger, or any other strong emotion can bring about destruction long before it brings about success, sure, but that’s not to say that indulging in these is an automatic fail, and the Jedi’s assertion that that is a sign of failure is endlessly frustrating. You can hardly achieve balance by denying a whole part of yourself entirely. I have never been more convinced that the Jedi simply do not have any therapists on staff at all. Their solution: if you’re feeling sad, then stop.
The next charge Osha levels at Qimir is that he killed her friends. Putting aside the nameless Jedi, Qimir points out that Yord was ready to toss Osha into jail for someone else’s crime, and that Jecki would have eventually pulled away the way Sol did. Neither of these statements feel 100% fair, but they don’t feel fully untrue either. It’s not to say that any of these people disliked Osha — Dafne Keen even said in an interview that Jecki was crushing on her a little bit — but with their time and lives committed to the Order first and foremost, they wouldn’t be able to love her the way she loves them.
Osha storms out after telling Qimir he can’t corrupt her like he did Mae — oh, sweetie, he’s corrupting you a whole different way — and Qimir follows close behind. He reminds her that she stayed on the island to kill him, and gives her the opportunity to do so, going so far as to press the saber against his chest. But Osha isn’t quite ready to give him the Han Solo treatment (too soon?), since a Jedi doesn’t attack the unarmed. Qimir challenges her belief that she’s still a Jedi, especially since the Order “threw her away,” but Osha insists she left because she wanted to. A tense back and forth reveals that Osha left because she “failed” but she doesn’t say more than that, since her next move is to finally ignite the saber and hold it close to his throat. Qimir is barely ruffled, and tells her that it’s only after losing everything that he was finally able to be free.
This is enough to get her to at least back off, though now it has me wondering how her failure was measured, and once it was determined that she had failed, how did the decision for her to leave come about. I am once again reminded of how Leslye cites Ahsoka leaving the Order as one of her go-to Clone Wars episodes, and the more I see the more I’m convinced she left under similar circumstances.
Back on Sol’s ship, Bazil continues his investigations, while Mae joins Sol in the common room and tells him the system will be up shortly. She gives him a five minute estimate, but we all know it’ll just be right before he says something important. Sol is kicking himself for not sensing who/what Qimir was back on Olega, and in a brief moment of understanding, Mae suggests that in times like these, they only see what they want and expect to see, rather than the truth.
Mae tells Sol that she lost a lot of herself to become a Jedi, her anger at Osha spilling over into their conversation, but for now Sol takes it for what it is and expresses his regret. Mae then presses him for the truth of what really happened on Brendok, and it looks like he’s just about to tell her when the ship powers back up. Mae races to the cockpit and immediately tries to call out using the comms, but Sol stuns her before she can. Where any other Jedi would have immediately stunned and restrained her, I appreciate that Sol took the alternate approach. Yeah, he’s used the mind trick on her before, but this slow drawing out is a great way to see what she thinks she knows, and more importantly what she feels, since the question of Qimir’s identity is no longer a mystery.
I also appreciate how quickly this switcheroo was uncovered, since it would be extremely hard to believe that the people who can sense others so well would be so fooled by an interloper in their midst. Far more likely that Sol knew all along and was playing the long game. But even with Mae out of the picture, Sol isn’t ready to go back to the Jedi. He switches off the transponder and takes off to hyperspace mere moments before the Jedi arrive.
Much to the concern of Padawan Mog, Vernestra accompanies the team to Khofar, despite the fact that hyperspace travel is something she finds unsettling. A book reference?? In my High Republic show?! Glorious. Her reason for going? This is something she needs to “handle personally.” They arrive on Khofar and venture into the woods.
Osha asks Qimir if he tried the same tactic on Mae, but he replies that she was more singularly focused on revenge, whereas he is more interested in the “power of two.” The language evokes, among other things, Palpatine’s speech to Rey and Ben about their dyad also being “the power of two” leading me to wonder if Qimir is also looking to create a dyad for himself. Since I still firmly believe Osha and Mae are a dyad, I wonder how this will interfere with his plans — and also whether he’d be willing to consider a romantic relationship with Osha in lieu of a Force-driven one. He did ask if she wanted to join him in the bath after all.
He pulls up part of his shirt to wipe his face — fixing a creepy helmet is sweaty work — and Osha remarks on the scar he has on his back. He tells her it was put there by someone who “threw him away,” which Osha realizes was his Jedi Master. Again, let’s put a pin in this one. He then tells her the helmet is made of cortosis and functions as a sensory deprivation headpiece, leaving you alone with the Force and “what you bring with you” — which sounds an AWFUL lot like the Force tunnel on Dagobah and the mirror cave on Ahch-To. And before anyone tells me that’s not how cortosis works, I would remind you this is fictional and it works however will best serve the story. He tells Osha to put it on, and though she refuses, he still leaves her alone with it looking really conflicted.
Vernestra, Mog and their companions come across the scene of the fight on Khofar, with the bodies still scattered where they fell. As they move through the scene, flashes of what happened come to Vernestra and she puts the pieces together. Mog suggests Osha and Mae survived somehow, and at Vernestra’s prompting also tries to piece together what happened. Vernestra points out they were killed by a lightsaber, and Mog asks if it might have been Sol that did it.
Vernestra doesn’t deny that, but does seem distraught at the idea. The key word there is “seem.” And now it’s time to take out those pins. I’ve said from the beginning that Vernestra doesn’t really feel like she did in the books, but I also said that it’s understandable given how much time has passed. Now I have to wonder if there’s something more at play here. She recognizes what happened on Khofar, and she also recognizes that Mae had Jedi training. This could just be a familiarity with the Jedi arts, but now I have to wonder if she was the Master that trained and then cast out Qimir. He told Osha his training was a really long time ago, and with Vern pushing 120 years old, its not unlikely that Qimir is older than he looks and his training predated Osha’s arrival at the Temple. The one thing adding to this theory of mine? We know what a sideways blow from a lightsaber looks like. It looks like the scar on Kylo Ren’s face, which is to say a relatively straight line. What it doesn’t look like is a curved, jagged line, caused by something a little more flowy. Say…a light whip?
Mae wakes up restrained to a bed on the ship, with Sol revealing that he knew it was her, and while he won’t harm her, he’s going to use her to try and find Osha and Qimir. But first things first, he’s going to tell her the truth about what happened on Brendok — cue the set-up for next week.
And just when you think we’re fading to the credits, we return to Qimir’s cave one last time, with Osha finally examining the helmet up close, and realizing the cave itself is home to deposits of cortosis. She finally picks the terrifying thing up and puts it on, and while I don’t know this for sure, I can’t believe I have to wait two weeks to see where this is going.
The first six episodes are streaming on Disney+ now.
