This evening saw the debut of the fourth episode of Lucasfilm’s live-action Disney+ series Star Wars: The Acolyte, and below are my recap and thoughts on this installment.
The Acolyte episode 4, which is entitled “Day,” begins on the planet Khofar (another location that’s newly introduced for this series), where the Wookiee Jedi Master Kelnacca (played by Joonas Suotamo) goes about his day, and we see that his makeshift hut is decorated with the symbols of the witch coven we met on Brendok in the previous chapter. Then we cut to the Jedi Temple on Coruscant, where Osha (Amandla Stenberg) has arrived at a combat-training room to say goodbye to Jecki Lon (Dafne Keen), an unlikely friendship is forming between the two… or is it something more? (Are they supposed to be flirting here? I really am not sure.) Anyway, Osha has decided to return to her life and leave the pursuit of her twin sister Mae to the Jedi. Back on Khofar, Mae (also Stenberg) and her cohort Qimir (Manny Jacinto) land on the planet and there’s a bit of discussion about why he is helping her, but no real answers just yet. Then after the opening title we’re back on Coruscant in a Jedi briefing with a cameo appearance by Ki-Adi-Mundi (played here by Lucasfilm regular Derek Arnold, taking over the role from Silas Carson in the Star Wars prequel trilogy)– this surprise is very interesting considering what the Jedi Master eventually has to say about the existence of the Sith in The Phantom Menace. I suppose the Cerean species is long-lived as well. And did I also spot a brief cameo appearance by Plo Koon?
In the Jedi briefing, they discuss how important it is to find out who trained Mae, and how Master Sol (Lee Jung-jae) will likely be the next target of her murderous rampage after Kelnacca (completing the elimination of the four Jedi stationed on her home planet when she was a child). Vernestra Rwoh (Rebecca Henderson) advises against informing the Jedi High Council, and instead chooses to send Sol and Jecki along with a team of other Jedi to retrieve Kelnacca and stop Mae’s killing spree. In private, Vernestra chastises Sol for not telling her that Mae might still be alive, though he claims he truly believed she had died. On Khofar, Mae and Qimir further discuss the nature of their master and his goals as they walk toward where Kelnacca is living, and then back on Coruscant Sol convinces Osha to join him on the quest to stop Mae. On the way to Khofar, Osha meets Bazil, a rodent-like alien who will serve as the Jedi’s tracker on the planet, and then once they land we learn that Kelnacca has been self-exiled in the jungle for over a year. So the trek begins, with Yord Fandar (Charlie Barnett) insisting that Osha walk behind the Jedi. Along the way they encounter some enormous deadly bugs, and Osha contemplates how her sensing and disturbing one of them led to its death, in a parallel to how we saw the Jedi disturb the coven last week. There’s also some more quasi-flirting (or maybe it is just friendship?) between Osha and Jecki during the trek.
We get another scene between Qimir and Mae, during which the latter comes to a realization: the fact that her sister is still alive changes everything, and she no longer has to do what her dark-side master says and can simply turn herself in instead. She fools Qimir into being snagged in a trap, resulting in him hanging upside-down, and then she races toward Kelnacca’s derelict-spaceship-turned-hut, where she is discovered by Bazil, who screams aloud to attract the Jedi. But before they arrive, Mae rushes into Kelnacca’s hut only to find the Wookiee Jedi dead from a lightsaber wound. Mae immediately realizes this can only mean one thing: her master has arrived on Khofar to finish the deed. Here’s where the Jedi surround Kelnacca’s hut and demand that Mae essentially “come out with her hands up,” but they quickly find themselves interrupted by the arrival of the mysterious dark-side master, who descends from the sky behind Osha in a very cool-looking, ominous shot. Not knowing exactly what their quarry is capable of, the Jedi all line up and ignite their lightsabers, but the dark-side master shoves them all away with the Force.
That’s the cliffhanger ending for this fourth episode of The Acolyte, and it’s an exciting one that means the next episode will likely begin with a showdown between the Jedi and this enigmatic villain on Khofar– that is, unless we get another extended flashback to fill in more gaps of these characters’ ever-expanding history. Either way, it should be quite interesting. Still, this was probably my least favorite episode of the series so far, mostly because there was just too much time spent walking through the woods, and I started to get frustrated with the confounding relationships between both Osha and Jecki and Mae and Qimir. By the way, I think it’s pretty obvious at this point that Qimir is the person behind the villain’s mask, so I’m also getting a little tired of that reveal being dragged out for much longer– hopefully that happens next week. Otherwise, I was actually surprised that Kelnacca was offed before we got to spend much time with him at all, and while I’m sure some fans will be upset by that turn of events, I actually feel like it was a fairly bold move. This marks the halfway point of the season, and with only one Jedi left on the hit list (Sol) I have to wonder how showrunner Leslye Headland will fill those remaining four episodes. Obviously as I mentioned above (and Sol himself alludes to in dialogue with Osha) there’s going to be more to the backstory, so I could see at least one of those installments being entirely flashback again. But what I really want to know is… what the heck happened to Yord Fandar’s Padwan Tasi Lowa, who we met at the beginning of episode 1 and then never showed her face again? Maybe she’s actually the one behind the mask after all!
The first four episodes of Star Wars: The Acolyte are now streaming exclusively via Disney+.