- Title: The Acolyte – Teach/Corrupt
- wiki: link
After it was revealed that The Acolyte centered around a pair of twins you knew eventually we’d get around to the obligatory Parent Trap situation (especially considering this is a Disney product making such a turn of events inevitable). Having taken her sister’s identity, Mae (Amandla Stenberg) spends some time with Sol (Lee Jung-jae) plotting his murder until her deception is uncovered. Her capture seems to set up a revelation about the events which occurred on Brendok years earlier involving Sol, and the Jedi Mae have killed, which he and the others appear to have hidden from the Jedi.
We also get Jedi Master Vernestra (Rebecca Henderson) and handful of others looking into events which occurred on Khofar while taking great pains to hide that information from both the Jedi Council and the Jedi. After finding the bodies of the fallen Jedi, it’s theorized on what might have happened (including on whether or not Sol could be responsible). I’m not sure if Vernestra is corrupt or simply foolish, but given events so far I would be surprised if there isn’t some reveal yet to come about her character.
The more intriguing half of the episode catches up with Osha (Stenberg) now a guest of Qimir (Manny Jacinto) on his solitary island. We get several discussions between the pair including Osha threatening to kill him and Qimir suggesting she do so. Leaning into the more subtle path towards the Dark Side that was best explored in the Expanded Universe with Jacen Solo, we get Qimir’s quite reasonable explanation about the path he walks compared to the unfeeling and far more constricting one enforced by the Jedi.
While the episode teases the two characters in different places, I don’t know that we’ve seen enough to pull either from the path they are currently on to the opposite side. Will Sol’s confession and contrition be enough to mollify Mae’s rage (and will we get another full episode flashback or something more concise this time around)? And will Qimir’s view plant a seed in Osha that may eventually bloom? It will be interesting to see how things unfold from here.
I was a bit on the fence with the revelation that Qimir was the mysterious Dark Force user, despite how it plays into established themes we’ve seen with Sith hiding in plain sight. Slightly disappointed that he referred to himself as Sith as well, I decided to reserve judgement on what we got in the follow up episode. While it’s not the road I would have gone down, I think there’s enough in “Teach/Corrupt” to justify the decision as long as it continues to pay off in the remaining episodes.
