Summary
“Choice” provides unsatisfying answers for season-long mysteries, highlighting sloppy writing and plotting.
I’ve been kinder to The Acolyte than most critics have, but Episode 7, “Choice”, made me feel a bit silly for coming to its defense. While I maintain that it isn’t fair to judge a deliberately obscure and piecemeal mystery until you have all the answers about where it’s ultimately going, the writing was kind of on the wall as far back as Episode 3, several moments of which this extended flashback episode painfully replays.
In retreading some of those moments from a different point of view, “Choice” exposes that the mystery box-style storytelling that has been employed here was the wrong call. These answers weren’t worth waiting almost the entire season for, and the sloppy writing is ultimately too reluctant to commit to some of its more interesting underlying ideas.
And if this episode doesn’t work, most of the show and its characters don’t work either.
Why were the Jedi on Brendok?
The Acolyte | Image via Disney+
Anyway, in The Acolyte Episode 7, we return to the planet of Brendok sixteen years in the past, where Masters Sol, Kelnacca, and Indara, and the latter’s Padawan Torbin, are conducting research for the Jedi Order.
As is rather clunkily explained, the “Great Hyperspace Disaster” – a significant event in the High Republic era but unimportant here – left Brendok barren, but in recent years the planet has sprung to life, perhaps through the intervention of the Force itself. Sol describes this phenomenon as a “vergence”, an extremely high concentration of Force energy that could, theoretically, create life on a ruined world.
This vergence is of extreme importance to the Jedi, which is why they have been taking samples of the planet’s flora and fauna for weeks, much to the dismay of Torbin, who just wants to return home to Coruscant. And this is where The Acolyte first stumbles, since I’m not exaggerating when I say that Torbin’s entire motivation for everything that follows is literally that he just wants to go home.
The Jedi Aren’t the Bad Guys – Sol Is
Lee Jung-jae as Master Sol in The Acolyte | Image via Disney+
It’s not entirely clear what The Acolyte wants to say about the Jedi of this era. Anyone who has read any of the High Republic novels and comics knows that a persistent theme is the Order’s well-intentioned but ill-advised efforts to impose themselves on a nascent Republic, positioning them as the “bad guys” in the sense of their overreach doing more harm than good.
But “Choice” frames the Jedi intervention on Brendok as more a consequence of Sol’s inadequacy. Early on, he criticizes Indara’s approach with Torbin, and she quips that this is the reason why he doesn’t have a Padawan of his own. And so he spends the rest of the episode trying to get one in increasingly weird ways.
As soon as Sol spots Osha and Mae and realizes that the planet is inhabited, he essentially begins to stalk them. By insisting that they are in danger from the witches, he compels the other Jedi to gatecrash the Ascension, as we saw in Episode 3. He continues to reiterate that Osha and Mae – though particularly Osha – are in danger and need “saving”, though he has no real grounds for the claim.
This lends a slightly more sinister tone to the sequence we saw previously wherein Mae deliberately fails the Jedi’s tests and Osha passes with flying colors, with heavy recruitment rhetoric from Sol. It’s worth reiterating that the official position of the Order here is that the Jedi should not interfere in Brendok’s goings-on. Osha is too old to train as a Padawan, and interfering with the coven is too risky.
Osha and Mae Are Not Twins
Osha and Mae in The Acolyte | Image via Disney+
The inciting incident for the disaster that follows is Torbin’s discovery that Mae and Osha are not twins – they’re actually the same person literally split into two. We get no more explanation for why this might be or how it might work – though we know from Episode 3 that Aniseya and Koril had some complicity in it – but Torbin sees it as evidence of a vergence in the Force and thus his ticket back to Coruscant.
Torbin rushes off, and Sol follows, obviously sensing an opportunity to conclude his mission of essentially snatching Osha from the coven to serve as his Padawan. The witches of Brendok, meanwhile, prepare to repel the Jedi through force, which is defensible at this point.
We also see another angle of Mae starting the fire while bickering with her “sister”. As it turns out the fire was solely her responsibility, but she clearly didn’t intend for it to spread and burn the whole colony down. It’s the beginning of her being scapegoated for something that absolutely wasn’t her fault, which to be fair we’ve known was coming since much earlier in the season.
The Acolyte Episode 7 Reveals How The Witches Died
The Acolyte | Image via Disney+
When Sol and Torbin once again break into the mining facility that the coven is living in, they confront Mother Aniseya and Mother Koril about the origins of Osha and Mae. Again, we get no real explanation. When things get a little testy and it looks like Torbin and Koril are about to come to blows, Aniseya transforms into a cloud of black smoke – an ability which both she and Koril have, though it is once again never explained – and Sol stabs it, and thus her, right in front of Mae.
So, Mae literally saw Sol stab her mother to death. That’s why she’s angry with the Jedi, which is pretty understandable, though Sol is visibly horrified by what he has done. It’s clear he thought Aniseya posed a threat, though it’s similarly clear that he has been wanting to see that since the episode began.
In the – decent, to be fair – action sequence that follows, Koril and the other witches mind control Kelnacca, who sets about Sol and Torbin. This is how the latter got his facial scars. Luckily, Indara is able to intervene just in time and use the Force to eject the witches from Kelnacca’s mind, but in severing the connection, she kills the witches. There is zero indication that she knew this would happen so, again, the Jedi aren’t really culpable here. It’s just a shitty situation.
We Still Don’t Know How Mae Survived
Mae and Osha face off in The Acolyte Episode 7 | Image via Disney+
“Choice” doesn’t tell us much that we didn’t already know. Sure, it adds clarity about how the witches died and why Mae had such a profound hatred of the Jedi, and it also explains why Sol and Torbin were nursing so much guilt over the events. But it leaves several key questions unanswered.
One of them is specifically how Osha and Mae were created, and how it relates to the present-day plot with the Stranger. In dialogue in previous episodes, Qimir expressed a connection to Sol or at least a knowledge of the events on Brendok which doesn’t crop up here.
Another is how Mae survived. We see the final moment between the twins again here, standing on either side of a broken bridge, and in the episode’s most damning moment, we see that Sol realized he couldn’t save both and decided to sacrifice Mae to protect Osha. We don’t, however, see how Mae survived what looks like a fatal fall.
Lest we forget, at the end of Episode 6, Sol clearly began to recount this story to Mae by way of explanation. But why? She was there, and she saw most of it for herself. It’s a very strange way of excusing another flashback episode that largely reiterates things we’ve already seen.
The Jedi Decide To Cover Up What Happened
Carrie Ann Moss as Master Indara in The Acolyte | Image via Disney+
In other unsurprising developments, the end of The Acolyte Episode 7 reveals that the Jedi decided to cover up what happened on Brendok and scapegoat Mae for the destruction of the coven, ostensibly to spare Osha any further trauma.
This is Indara’s idea. Sol wants to face justice from the Council, but Indara argues that if he does, he’ll have not only killed Osha’s entire family but denied her the opportunity of being a Jedi, which even Aniseya expressed outright was her intention.
There’s only one episode left, and it has a lot of work to do in tying all this together. It seems clear at this point that it won’t be able to do so satisfactorily, which is a shame since there was a lot of potential here in this first foray into live-action High Republic storytelling. “Choice”, far from being the episode that promised to explain everything, instead seemingly condemns The Acolyte to a terrible fate – being the show its detractors accused it of being since the start.
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