‘The Acolyte’ Episode 5 Recap: Lights, Saber, Action! (2024)

If I’d filled out a report card for The Acolyte after its first four episodes, the Star Wars prequel’s pacing, set design, dialogue, and character development all would have gotten grades between “needs improvement” and “adequate.” There was only one subject in which the series truly excelled: combat. The fighting was fantastic, if frustratingly brief.

I didn’t give out grades. But my previous recaps did offer feedback—and this week, unwittingly, the series took it to heart. Whatever your (nontoxic) complaint about preceding installments—Mediocre conversations? Muddled motivations? Insufficient fighting?—I was with you. But in Episode 5, The Acolyte asks, “Well, what if the show were all fighting? Is that something you might be interested in?”

Hmm. How’d that line from Grogu go? YES. YES. YES. YES. This episode landed like a Sith surprise attack, sending me staggering, in a good way.

The ostensible twist—that Mae’s insouciant companion, Qimir, is in fact her masked master—barely was one: That reveal was apparent a parsec away. The real twist was that despite its slow start, The Acolyte kicked off the second half of its season with one of the most exciting episodes of Star Wars TV to date—no longer than last week’s, but so much sweeter. This week, the Force (and Force fu) was so strong with The Acolyte that even the trolls’ and haters’ hearts weren’t in their weekly review bombing.

After Episode 4, I wrote, “Just as nightfall follows day on Khofar, so might ‘Night’ follow ‘Day’ on The Acolyte. … Mae’s master is spoiling for a fight, and so is The Acolyte’s audience, which hasn’t seen one for two weeks. … After the tease at the end of this episode, the culmination must be big. Maybe bigger than the Duel of the Fates.”

Setup, meet payoff. “Night,” The Acolyte’s “Oops! All lightsabers” episode, is a Force-infused feast of clashing blades, shocking deaths, and one gloriously smirking, merciless Sith. I hate to be the guy who recommends a streaming series that doesn’t really get good until Episode 5, but The Acolyte leaves me no choice: Every fan of Star Wars needs to see “Night,” even though the lead-up to this week wasn’t nearly as spectacular. Whether the series rides this momentum to next month’s finale or heads downhill from here, The Acolyte has left an indelible mark on the franchise, like the coven tattoo on Mae’s forehead. “Night” arguably sets a new standard for ground-bound Star Wars action. At minimum, it’s a fighting tour de force that must be mentioned in any ranking of the most kinetic, acrobatic, physical combat in the history of live-action Star Wars, along with the Jedi vs. Sith showdowns in The Phantom Menace and Revenge of the Sith and the throne-room melee in The Last Jedi.

In April, Dafne Keen (who plays Jecki Lon) told Entertainment Weekly, “We want to top the Darth Maul fight.” “Night,” which was directed by Alex Garcia Lopez and written by Kor Adana and Cameron Squires, doesn’t take long to reaffirm that intention. Soon after Osha comes to, following the Force flick Mae’s master dished out at the end of Episode 4, she stumbles over a dead Jedi, then watches from afar as his killer takes on several still standing warriors at once. I noted last week that the unnamed Jedi on this Star Wars away team weren’t long for this life, but I didn’t expect two of them to be turned into a Jedi kebab. Qimir’s brutal double kill sets the tone for the episode and also thins the ranks considerably. Less than two minutes into the episode, Qimir has quite literally cut down the Jedi contingent to crucial characters only, facilitating the two-on-one and one-on-one duels that make up most of the episode. Sol aside, this isn’t the Jedi A-Team—and the entire order is untested when it comes to taking on Sith.

The first third of “Night” unfolds like the climax of Return of the Jedi, crosscutting among three conflicts: Sol vs. Qimir, Jecki vs. Mae, and Osha vs. Yord’s rigid reliance on rules. (“I don’t want to have to subdue you, but I will,” Yord tells Osha. Yord, you can subdue me any day.) Eventually, the streams (and blades) cross, as the core combatants come together for fateful (and fatal) confrontations. One key to connecting the main event and undercard characters comes when Mae summons Osha through the Force, Luke and Leia style. “We have to go back,” Osha tells Yord, à la Jack and Kate. Yord would’ve been better off sticking to Sol’s orders; straying from his adherence to protocol leads to his demise.

Last week, I lamented that up close, Khofar’s forest looked like a set. This week, the setting seems much more atmospheric and convincing, thanks to the lower light and murkier air. (As Dagobah demonstrated, a little fog goes a long way.) The relative darkness also makes the sabers pop. Adding to the episode’s unsettling aura is Qimir’s knack for stealthy exits and entrances. No wonder Mae spends most of the episode repeatedly running away from the phantom whose bidding she did when the season started.

Jecki exposes Qimir’s face by bashing his helmet with the hilt of her saber, but she doesn’t discover the second, shoto-style saber hidden inside his hilt until it’s about to be plunged through her chest three times. Just like that, Sol is down another Padawan; he doesn’t have a great graduation rate. Yord becomes one with the Force a few minutes later. Alas, poor Yord! Condolences to the Yord Horde. The by-the-book Jedi was way out of his element against a Sith. “He doesn’t follow the rules of combat,” a nonplussed Yord said to Osha. “And there’s no method to his movements. It … it doesn’t make sense.” Yord’s neck is snapped by the time Qimir explains his philosophy: “Rules, rules, rules. If you never follow them, you never have to break them.”

Two factors prevented “Night” from packing even more of a Force-powered punch. The first, which stems from the failings of the first half of the season, is that we still don’t know these characters that intimately, which makes it more difficult to mourn them. Some of the most memorable duels in Star Wars—such as Luke’s and Ahsoka’s face-offs with Vader in the original trilogy and Rebels, respectively—are so striking not because of incredible choreography, but because of the characters’ relationships and the resulting emotional stakes. Prince Hamlet knew Yorick, but we hardly knew Yord. I wanted more time with Yord and Jecki, but we never got it (and now never will, unless they show up in flashbacks; another full-length flashback seems likely for Episode 7, which will be helmed by the same director as Episode 3). That made their deaths more stunning on a superficial level—we don’t expect to see significant characters killed off when they’ve barely been introduced!—but it also muted my mourning. To be honest, it pained me more to see Osha sacrifice Pip.

The other was the series’ somewhat generic score. Although the captions declared that the music was “thrilling,” the music by Michael Abels was watered-down John Williams all the way.

Disney+

If there was ever any doubt (there wasn’t) that the score of the first six Star Wars movies made them unforgettable even when their nonmusical aspects slumped, the absence of a banger on this episode should highlight how essential Williams was. Then again, it’s a testament to the quality of the choreography (not a strength of, say, Ahsoka) that the action works as well as it does without equally compelling accompaniment. Heck, even Star Wars Kid would’ve seemed epic set to “Battle of the Heroes” or “Duel of the Fates.” (Well, no, maybe not.)

One Williams motif makes an appearance in “Night.” Notice the snippet of Kylo Ren’s theme at the end of the episode, when Qimir finds Osha and heals her wound (a very Reylo move). Could this be another indication that the sisters form a Force dyad?

I’ve been calling the Sith Qimir, the name his alter ego used, but as the formerly masked man says, “I have no name. But the Jedi like you might call me ... Sith.” (The captions and cast quotes call him “the Stranger.”) Notably, he’s the first person to say “Sith” in the series—the Jedi didn’t dare mention the bogeymen aloud—but what might it signify that he wouldn’t call himself Sith? That he doesn’t believe in labels? That he’s self-taught or falls somewhere outside the Sith tradition? He does dress a lot like a proto–Knight of Ren. “He gets into your head and he stays there,” Yord says, to which Osha responds, “My mother could do that.” (Mine, too, Osha. Mine, too.) Maybe one of the witches broke bad and took him under her wing after the Jedi’s actions on Brendok.

Alternatively, he may have meant that he hasn’t been dubbed Darth [Something Sinister] yet. “I want a pupil,” he pronounces. “An acolyte.” But he isn’t seeking an apprentice, which suggests that he’s still an apprentice himself. As I’ve previously speculated, Qimir may be a misdirect: Perhaps the plotters of the series telegraphed his identity to distract us from the true mystery of who his master is.

For now, at least, it’s The Parent Trap time: Osha and Mae have swapped places and masters, though neither Sol nor Osha knows it yet. (It’s also unclear whether Qimir thinks Osha is Mae and flip-flops about killing her, or knows she’s Osha and believes she’ll be a better pupil.) But Mae’s forehead tat will undoubtedly give her away at an inopportune time, if Bazil and a patched-up Pip don’t sniff her out first. Osha (and we) should finally learn the whole truth about Brendok, which could cause Osha to turn on Sol and complete Mae’s original Jedi-hunting assignment. If, that is, Mae hasn’t leveraged Sol’s trust in her to strike him down unarmed. (Sol almost has to die somehow, to keep the Sith’s existence secret.) Could Sol have “brainwashed” Osha so thoroughly that her memories of Brendok are fake, implanted like a replicant’s? We’ve seen the Jedi root around others’ brains earlier in this series, and even Qimir tries to keep his helmet on, lest Sol read his thoughts.

This week’s emphasis was on the lightsaber ballet, which was enriched by Qimir’s use of cortosis armor. Cortosis, which goes way back to 1990s Legends stories but hasn’t shown up before on-screen, not only blocks saber blades like beskar, but briefly shorts them out. (Evidently, it also blocks Jedi mind probes, like Magneto’s helmet impedes Charles Xavier’s psychic powers.) I also liked a lot of little touches. How huge the hilt of Kelnacca’s saber was. Mae’s callback to Osha’s bad blocking as a kid in Episode 3. Mae’s swingle-swipe lightsaber bangs trim. (I wouldn’t want to see a lightsaber buzz cut.) The change in Mae’s slinking gait as she nears Sol and assumes her Osha identity. The scene when the precise saber combat between Sol and Qimir devolves into an all-out brawl/boxing match. The un-Jedi-like growl Sol emits as he hurls toward the Sith. Sol’s claim that Qimir is “no Jedi”—a line that evokes similar pronouncements made by and about Baylan Skoll, Cal Kestis, and Ahsoka Tano.

On the other side of the ledger, there’s my continued confusion about what Mae wants. (“They’ve turned you against me,” she says to Osha, evoking Anakin’s Episode III plea to Padme: “The Jedi turned against me. Don’t you turn against me.”) And the fact that this taut, intense episode ends with Qimir inscrutably talking to himself. (“What extraordinary beings we are. Even in the revelation of our triumph, you see the depth of our despair.”) That line did make me go from finally feeling triumphant about The Acolyte to again feeling some despair.

Plus, like most cases of mistaken twin identity, The Acolyte’s requires us to suspend some disbelief. One would think that Sol could distinguish his old apprentice’s presence in the Force from Mae’s—they may look like the same person on the outside, but luminous beings are we. (Of course, once you start down the dark path of wondering why Jedi can do certain stuff sometimes but not other times, forever will it force you to nitpick Star Wars stories.) And there are still some clunky lines. (“You’re a criminal, Mae. You must pay for your crimes.”) There’s the almost idiot plot–level reluctance to divulge what the Jedi did; Qimir and Mae both make cryptic allusions to Sol’s sins without simply saying what they are and more easily swaying Osha to their side. And there’s Osha stopping Sol from killing Qimir on the grounds that Jedi don’t kill the unarmed. Qimir merced Yord with his bare hands, so I think I’d classify his arms as arms. (My man has clearly been blasting bis and tris.)

Since we’re talking about Manny Jacked-Cinto, who owned this episode and showed real range in his transformation from rogue and scoundrel to Sith, let’s rank Qimir’s coolest quotes from “Night”:

5. In response to Mae’s “Master, I was weak”: “You’ve always been weak.”

4. To Sol: “I’ve accepted my darkness. What have you done with yours?”

3. In response to Sol’s “Why risk discovery?”: “Well, I did wear a mask.”

2. After Sol gasps, “Jecki”: “Was that its name?” (A possible response to Jecki’s “What is that?” last week.)

1. In response to Sol’s “What master hides his face from his pupil?”: “You tell me.”

And, while we’re at it, why not order Qimir’s coolest kills?

5 and 4. Jedi redshirts 1 and 2

That tree trunk may have hidden the dual decapitation, but we know what went down. That wasn’t the only deception involved in this mini–Order 66: Those redshirt deaths were a deke that made the likes of Jecki and Yord seem safer.

3. Pip

Points deducted only because it’s so easy for droids to be brought back to life. Bazil is already on it.

2. Jecki

When Jecki sinks to her knees, the glow of Qimir’s sabers shines through her. “She was a child,” Sol rebukes Qimir. Qimir retorts, “You brought her here,” the latest indictment of Jedi recruitment and training practices.

1. Yord

Maybe the most brutal death in on-screen Disney Star Wars, save for that time Vader casually broke a kid’s neck. And Sol just left the corpses lying there! This show might have a higher death rate than Rogue One.

Believe it or not, this may be one of the shortest recaps I’ve written for an episode of a Star Wars series. (What can I say? I tend to be … thorough.) But don’t mistake my brevity lack of longer-windedness for a lack of respect. The highest compliment I can pay The Acolyte’s fight “Night” is that the episode simply speaks for itself. Most Star Wars fans start swinging invisible blades and making lightsaber sounds from the moment they fall for the franchise. Few Star Wars releases have ever fed that fantasy so well.