The Acolyte Epsiode 5: The Master’s Reveal, A Major Book Reference, And Other Easter Eggs
The length of live-action Star Wars TV episodes has been a point of debate ever since the first season of The Mandalorian was full of sitcom-length episodes. And now The Acolyte is here to stir this debate again. Though we’ve got a little bit more clarity than usual because this episode, which runs for about 27 minutes without the opening recap and end credits, plays very obviously like the second half of last week’s episode. It’s frustrating, but the sick fight scenes between Mae’s newly emerged master and the Jedi who invaded Khofar, not to mention the big reveal of that mysterious villain’s identity, go a long way toward making up for it.
Warning: This article will be nothing but spoilers for Episode 5 of The Acolyte, “Night.”
Last week’s episode, which was the same short length, saw every main cast member arrive on Khofar, and then they all came together at the very end of the episode. And then this week, they fought. The audience would have been better served by having this story as one hour-long episode, instead of having a week-long intermission in the middle for no real reason. It’s a puzzling phenomenon, and it makes it somewhat harder to take this series seriously when it undercuts its own rhythm that way.
Fortunately, the particulars of the action this week, in which Mae’s mysterious master finally reveals their face and slaughters most of the Jedi that came to Khofar with Sol and Osha, are pretty awesome. These sequences are a blast, with lightsaber and hand-to-hand battles that have a much different sort of vibe than we’ve ever seen before in live-action Star Wars. This sequence does not go well for this Jedi. While Jecki in particular puts up a good fight, this crew just isn’t ready for this–and every Jedi, aside from Master Sol, are all slaughtered. Yes, Jecki and Yord are super dead.
And Mae’s master, it turns out, is Qimir. It’s not the most shocking revelation after this guy, who had been pretending not to have Force powers, made a reference to the Sith Code a couple episodes back, but it’s nice that it’s not some completely random other person we didn’t already know. Now I can’t help but wonder where Qimir’s own master is, but there may be a complication there. We’ll come back to that shortly.
Among all the fighting in this episode is a scrap between Osha and Mae. Mae tells Osha that there’s a lot more that happened at the witch coven when they were kids than she knows, and that Osha shouldn’t trust the Jedi. But Osha is too straight-laced and can’t make that choice. She tries to arrest Mae, but Mae is by far the better fighter and is able to subdue her. And in a strange move, Mae gives herself a haircut and goes to meet Sol while pretending to be Osha. And then Qimir finds Osha. Now that is a switcheroo.
While the episode was annoyingly short, it did have the decency to be pretty wild and entertaining. And we’ve also got some interesting details and Easter eggs to mull over as well, such as the live-action introduction of a really cool item from an old and beloved Star Wars novel. Let’s take a look.
Cortosis
When Qimir fights the Jedi, he’s repeatedly able to short out their lightsabers by deflecting the blades with his offhand bracer. This works because the armor is made from cortosis ore, which, well, shorts out lightsabers. This is the first live-action instance of this ore in Star Wars, but it comes from an old Expanded Universe novel that’s no longer canon: I, Jedi, by Michael A. Stackpole. That story, about a New Republic fighter pilot (Corran Horn from the X-Wing novels) who trains to become a Jedi under Luke Skywalker in order to save his wife, is one of the only Star Wars books written in first person.
“I have no name, but Jedi like you might call me Sith”
This is a fascinating one, because I’m not entirely sure what it means that Qimir claims to not have a name–obviously, the Sith we know, like Anakin Skywalker and Palpatine, actually have an excess of names with both their given names and their evil secret society titles. So why doesn’t Qimir (a fake name, of course, but we’ll have to keep using it) have one? Maybe because he’s not full Sith yet? Or maybe he’s not Sith at all, and he’s suggesting that the Jedi would simply classify him as a Sith by default because he’s a dark Force user.
Qimir wants an apprentice
Sol asks Qimir what he wants, and Qimir answers that he wants the freedom to use the Force however he wants, and also to train an acolyte of his own. It hasn’t worked out with Mae, he says, but he wants to keep trying without the Jedi constantly interfering. There are a few possible ways to read this, but this is my favorite: Qimir has his own master out there that he’s trying to undercut. His comments could also be a complaint about the Sith rule of two which dictated that there couldn’t be more than a pair of Sith at a time. But even though we know his face now, we still don’t truly know Qimir’s identity. Could one of the other potential suspects I listed last week, like Mother Koril, still be in play as the one who trained Qimir?
Qimir refers to Jecki as ‘it”
Yes, this is absolutely an example of Qimir doing some anti-alien racism. While racism is not traditionally a Sith thing, it does end up being a hallmark of Palpatine’s Empire, which was big on human supremacy and putting aliens in chattel slavery. With Palpatine possibly being heir to Qimir’s Sith tradition, it would make sense that he’d be a racist.
Mae swaps places with Osha
When the episode ends, Mae has executed a classic movie/TV swap: identical twins switching places. Mae, after giving herself a lightsaber haircut to look more like Osha, tries to trick Sol into thinking she is Osha–It’s hard to tell if Sol is convinced, but I suspect he can easily tell the difference. On the other hand, Sol is pretty emotionally wrecked by this point with all his friends dead, so who knows what’s really going on in his head right now?
Mae leaves Osha tied up, meanwhile, and it doesn’t take long for Qimir to find her. It’s very likely he’s going to try to use this situation to turn Osha to the dark side. So this is not the usual twin trick, since it’s not too likely that anybody’s been fooled. But it’s a complete reverse of circumstance for Mae and Osha nonetheless.
Aliens playing dejarik
Near the end of the episode, we see a couple aliens playing a game of dejarik on a tree stump–dejarik being the monster chess game that Chewbacca and C-3PO played aboard the Millennium Falcon in A New Hope.
