The Acolyte – Episode 6 “Teach/Corrupt” Recap & Review

Teach/Corrupt

Episode 6 of The Acolyte begins with Osha waking up and noticing her wounds have been bandaged up. She gets dressed and with a knife in hand, steps out and realizes she’s on “UNKNOWN PLANET”.

Meanwhile, over on Khofar, Master Sol prepares to take off with Mae. He heads to the console and feeds back to the council that his whole team are dead. He speaks to Vernestra but the message is scrambled. As for Mae, she heads into the cockpit with her knife drawn… and Sol immediately calls her Osha and tells her to “take the wheel”.

At this point, it’s unclear whether he’s just stupid or playing along because the show doesn’t give you enough to work with to make that distinction, especially given the horrific writing this season.

Unlike Sol, Bazil senses that Mae smells like a villain. He fixes up Pip and then we cut back to the “Unknown Planet”. 

Osha follows Qimir down to a nearby pool where he strips off and steps into the water to go for a swim. She grabs his lightsaber, but as he does Qimir senses her presence and knows that this is Osha. Qimir speaks up about vengeance and whether it’s honourable to kill him like this, stepping out of a pool fully nude. Qimir doesn’t see her as a prisoner but does confirm that Mae and Sol are both alive. He’s apparently bemused that she asked about Sol first rather than her murderous sister whom she’s been trying to kill. And then keep alive. And then kill again.

Back at the cockpit, Sol hugs Mae and calls her Osha again, thanking her for being there. The power on the ship goes out so Osha encourages her to go and take a look. When she gets there, both Pip and Bazil sense that this is Mae. Pip is restored to factory settings while Bazil stamps on Mae’s foot and takes off.

Meanwhile Vernestra learns that Sol has sent a distress signal from the Outer Rim confirming everyone in the team is dead. Vernestra decides to send a rescue team to Khofar to find him… even though he sent the signal from his ship… and a ship can fly anywhere. Vernestra is going to front this mission herself along with 20 others.

After this decision, we cut back to Qimir and Osha. The former used to be a Jedi a long time back. He brought Osha to this planet because she seems to be someone of importance. Apparently Sol has strength in the Force.

Qimir points out there’s another way to access the Force, coming from negative emotions that lead to the Dark Side. Apparently Dark Side and Light Side is just semantics. Qimir has lost everything in the past, which means he’s now free. Whether this is referencing Leslye Headland losing her status as Harvey Weinstein’s assistant and now free to headline a 180 million dollar Star Wars project is anyone’s guess. For now though, Osha buys into this and turns off the lightaber.

Meanwhile, Sol speaks to Mae and wonders how he couldn’t have sensed the villain on Khofar. She brings up the past and wants to know what happened… but the power turns back on. As Mae turns her back and heads up to the cockpit, Sol blasts her in the back. He knows that this is Mae after all. Don’t worry, I’m just as surprised as everyone else that Sol figured it out!

Vernestra and co. try to contact Sol but he instead turns off his comms and jumps through hyperspace. As he does, Vernestra’s ship shows up. Now, remember hyperspace jumps can actually destroy ships as confirmed in The Last Jedi, so they’re very lucky that this didn’t happen with the two ships here. And what are the odds of them showing up in the exact same place in space, literally inches apart given the vastness of space itself?

Anyway, Vernestra and co head into the forest, to the exact location where the Jedi have been slaughtered. Vernestra struggles to emote after grilling her companion, Mog. Vernestra senses one of those bugs nearby (even though we’ve established they sleep during the day and come out at night) and uses her purple lightsaber whip to kill it without even looking. They also contemplate who could have caused this devastation.

We then cut back to Mae and Qimir. The latter is trying to fix up his helmet. He confirms that he wants “the power of two, the power of maaaaannnyyy” and shows off a scar on his back. He’s not very subtle (but then nothing in this show has been) and it seems to hint that he’s the long lost “many” child.

Qimir encourages Osha to put on the Sith helmet for herself, which she does, while Sol locks up Mae and speaks to her. Sol promises to let her go (even though she’s killed two Jedi Masters) but first they’re going to talk. Sol wants her to listen… and then we fade to black.


The Episode Review

The Acolyte returns with another terrible episode, arguably the worst next to our lesbian space witch cult in episode 3. The writing is so clunky and slowing things down like this, without terrible choreography and flashy explosions to distract everyone, really shows off how bad the writing is. We’re led to believe that Osha has turned to the Dark Side after 3 sentences? Really?

The scenes with Vernestra are so poor as well and her scene with the bug and the purple lightsaber whip seems designed specifically so we get a bit of action and yes, the whip just looks poor and if you slow it down, you can see the wonky physics and effects from this whip too. It’s a wonder that her assistant wasn’t killed outright from being nearby.

The episode tries to be artistic by splitting off Osha and Mae, showing that they both don’t understand the Light and Dark side, muddying them up and presumably leading up to a showdown between the siblings on the wrong side of the conflict. It’s so painfully obvious by this point that it belies belief. It’s tedious and even worse, nothing actually happens for half of this ponderous, slow slog.

It’s clear now that the next chapter is going to be another flashback, presumably from Mae’s perspective so we see exactly how the stone settlement burnt down and how evil the Jedi actually are. But who cares at this point? Ultimately, The Acolyte is one of the worst written TV shows to drop in quite some time.

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1.5

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