Editor’s Note: The below recap contains spoilers for The Acolyte Episode 1.

The Big Picture

The first episode of
The Acolyte
quickly introduces audiences to the impressive ensemble cast.
Amandla Stenberg excels in twin roles as Mae and Osha.
Leslye Headland’s writing embodies the best aspects of the Star Wars franchise.

A little over three and a half years ago, Leslye Headland’s Star Wars series was announced, and now it’s finally time to delve into the mysteries of The Acolyte. Set at the tail end of the High Republic era, roughly 100 years before The Phantom Menace, the promising new Disney+ series gets to play in entirely uncharted territory, at least in live-action. The series is connected to the multimedia initiative, codenamed “Project Luminous,” first announced in 2018, which has spanned three phases of genre-rich storytelling in the publishing realm. The Acolyte perfectly captures the essence of the publishing initiative while delivering something wholly its own. Much like The High Republic novels, Headland’s series is unafraid to take risks — including killing off some of its most intriguing characters within the first two episodes. It’s a bold move, and it immediately proves that the stakes are just as high as the era suggests.

Up until “Project Luminous” launched in 2020, the Jedi have always been framed as a ruinous order. When George Lucas first introduced audiences to the concept of the Jedi Order, they were already scattered to the wind and as defunct as the Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser. While The High Republic novels have put the Order’s mettle to the test, the era is still defined by the fact that it showcases the Jedi at the height of their power. Setting The Acolyte on the downward slope of their glory, when we know that things will start to decay into the politically corrupt Order of the Prequel Era, allows the series to have more flexibility to play with extremes.

“A hundred years before the rise of the Empire, it is a time of peace. The Jedi Order and the Galactic Republic have prospered for centuries without war. But in the dark corners of the galaxy, a powerful few learn to use the Force in secret. One of them, a lone assassin, risks discovery to seek revenge…”

Episode 1, written and directed by Headland, opens on the planet Ueda with Mae (Amandla Stenberg) tracking down an unsuspecting Jedi and murdering her in cold blood. The series’ static opening crawl sets the scene for this by alluding to a lone assassin’s revenge-filled mission, but it still comes as a surprise to see such sweeping success within the first few minutes of the episode. With a hood drawn over her head and a mask concealing the bottom half of her face, Mae confronts Master Indara (Carrie-Anne Moss) and accuses her of attacking unarmed people, which the Jedi doesn’t necessarily refute.

Indara is reluctant to engage in whatever unfinished business Mae is looking to resolve, but Mae keeps instigating until there’s nothing left to do but turn the quiet cantina into a Force-user battle royale. Despite, quite literally, bringing a knife to a lightsaber fight, a sleight of hand and a cleverly played fake-out leave Mae as a Jedi slayer. Despite her short-lived screen time in Episode 1, Moss still delivers the sort of ass-kicking sequence one would expect from the actress who brought Trinity to life in The Matrix, and that connection is one of the reasons why this opening scene lands so well, with Moss’ previous work serving as a sort of shorthand for viewers to pick up context about what kind of Jedi Indara was.

The Acolyte The Acolyte is a mystery-thriller that will take viewers into a galaxy of shadowy secrets and emerging dark-side powers in the final days of the High Republic era. A former Padawan reunites with her Jedi Master to investigate a series of crimes, but the forces they confront are more sinister than they ever anticipated.Release Date June 4, 2024 Main Genre Sci-Fi Seasons 1 Studio Disney+ Franchise Star Wars Expand

Move Over Luke and Leia, The Cooler Twins of ‘The Acolyte’ Are Here

In the lead-up to the premiere, The Acolyte’s creative team tried their best to preserve a major plot point of the series: Amandla Stenberg is playing twins. Star Wars has a long history with twins, from Luke (Mark Hamill) and Leia (Carrie Fisher) to the decanonized Jacen and Jaina Solo of the Expanded Universe to Star Wars: Visions’ Karre and Am. Where we have previously seen our heroes tempted with visions of the corrupted, dark side versions of themselves, Osha’s is quite literal. Her mirror image, her twin, has fallen to the dark side—and she gets to confront what her own fall may have looked like through her sister.

Osha’s introduction is quite different from Mae’s. Instead of hunting down Jedi, Osha seems to have a much calmer life as she wakes up, chats with her adorable droid Pip, and heads off to socialize with her coworker Fillik (Anthony J. Abraham) before they get to work on shield generator repairs. But her quiet life as a “meknek” on the Nemodian cargo ship is quickly torn apart when a pair of Jedi turn up on the ship, looking for a former Jedi Padawan.

Yord Fandar (Charlie Barnett) cuts quite the figure in his High Republic-era Jedi robes, but his cocky attitude and the way he pries information out of the Nemodians makes it clear that Yord is one of those Jedi: Morally righteous and a little too proud of the respect that Jedi command. When he tracks down Osha on the vessel, she seems quite excited to see her old friend and even impressed that he’s passed his trials since she last saw him, but he has no time for the class reunion vibes.

Yord and the Padawan accompanying him start interrogating Osha about how long she’s been working on the cargo ship, where she was last night, and picking at the old wounds that led to her leaving the Jedi Order six years ago. This scene serves as a great info dump for information that will absolutely come into play down the line. Despite having an airtight alibi, Yord arrests Osha for murdering Master Indara and has her shipped to Coruscant via a droid-run prison ship. Even during the High Republic, the Jedi really loved playing cops.

‘The Acolyte’ Episode 1 Is Star Wars Meets ‘Prison Break’ — With a Twist

The Acolyte’s pace starts to really pick up the second Osha finds herself on a prison ship piloted and guarded by droids. She speaks with some of the other prisoners being held on the ship and discovers that she has arrived right in the midst of their planned prison break. They try to convince her to join in on their escape plans, but Osha has faith that the Jedi will find her innocent once they hear her case. The other prisoners aren’t as sure of that, and they proceed with their plans. They manage to overpower the droids guiding the ship, and without pilots to navigate it, the ship careens through hyperspace, knocking into space debris and making a rapid descent onto a nearby planet. The prisoners opt to leave Osha behind, calling her a Jedi Killer as they load onto one of the ship’s two escape pods.

As Osha recognizes the dire situation she finds herself in, she quickly gets to work trying to free herself from her cell—which is harder than it looks. Osha may have been a Jedi at one time, but it seems she isn’t able to tap into the Force the way she was as a child. She does eventually manage to free herself, but her bleeding-heart Jedi instincts leave her in an even bigger bind. Osha wasn’t the only prisoner that the others abandoned; they also left behind a prisoner (DanMilne) who is being gagged by a creature called a Dybbuk. She removes the Dybbuk from the man’s face and, instead of showing gratitude for being saved, he swiftly runs for the last escape pod, leaving Osha to hurtle through space alone.

‘The Acolyte’ Introduces a Fan-Favorite Character From the Novels

Amid the prison break, The Acolyte takes a quick trip to Coruscant, where Sol (Lee Jung-jae) is training a handful of Younglings about the Force. They all discuss the ways in which they see the physical embodiment of the Force, and perhaps it should be noted that one of the Younglings talks about seeing fire. Fire seems to be an element connected to the tragedy that Osha and Mae faced as children, and given Sol’s reaction to the child’s words, perhaps it’s connected to him as well.

As the lesson comes to an end, Vernestra Rwoh (Rebecca Henderson) arrives to speak with Sol about Osha. Before Osha became a Jedi Order dropout, she was Sol’s Padawan. He and Indara saved her from a fire when she was a child, and now Indara is dead — and Osha has been implicated in her murder. Sol seems reluctant to believe that his former Padawan would commit such a crime, and he seems to be the only one to even humor the idea of her potential innocence. Vern’s main concern seems to be about the optics of this case. What would the Senate and the galaxy think about a former Padawan murdering a Jedi Master?

Shortly after this scene, Jecki (DafneKeen) comes to find Sol because there has been an update in the case. She finds the Jedi Master mulling over old holograms from Osha’s time as his Padawan, and she tries to politely correct him about how such sentimentality might be seen as an attachment. While Sol is quick to brush aside that notion, The Acolyte has made it quite clear that Sol still has a soft spot for the girl. Unsurprisingly, the prisoners that escaped from the prison ship were apprehended and the Jedi have hauled them in for questioning. The ringleader who orchestrated the entire prison break is quick to frame Osha for the crime, but Sol isn’t convinced. With a little Jedi mind trick action, he gets the prisoner who was being tortured by the Dybbuk to admit that she actually saved his life before he betrayed her. They learn that the prison ship crash-landed on the planet Carlac and Sol is eager to go on a recovery mission to find Osha, dead or alive. Vern has her reservations about sending him alone to retrieve his former Padawan—especially after what happened to Indara—but she eventually agrees to let him go with a small team, including Yord and Jecki.

“I Give You You, and You Give Me Me”
Image via Lucasfilm

Osha miraculously survives the prison ship crash-landing on Carlac, but she isn’t out of the woods yet. As she looks through the wreckage for anything that can help her get off the snowy planet, she spots someone watching her. She chases after the figure and discovers that it’s Mae—or at least, a younger version of Mae. As Osha engages with the vision of her twin, she relives the tragic fire on Brendok that killed their family. Mae admits to killing Indara and vows to kill all of the Jedi, which jolts Osha out of the vision, or nightmare, as it seems.

As Sol, Yord, and Jecki make their way to Carlac, Yord and Sol share words about the former Padawan. Sol reveals that Mae was the one who started the fire that killed the twins’ family on Brendok, and Yord is quite surprised by this revelation, as nothing in Osha’s file indicated that she even had a twin. While Mae would explain why Osha has been swept up in a case of mistaken identity, Sol is insistent that he saw the girl die when he rescued Osha sixteen years ago. But, once they arrive on Carlac and track down Osha, she proves Sol wrong. While Yord is raring for a fight, Sol still believes in his former Padawan and her innocence. Yord and Sol track Osha through a cave system and find her standing on a ledge that she nearly falls off of. Sol saves her from plummeting to her death (again) by using the Force, and it’s then that Osha reveals that Mae is still alive, upending their entire investigation into Indara’s death.

As Episode 1 of The Acolyte comes to a close, we are reunited with Mae in a beautiful location where her Master seems to be dwelling. She speaks with the masked Sith Lord, who ominously speaks about the Jedi and the “dream” they live within. The episode ends with a rather cryptic piece of dialogue: “An acolyte kills without a weapon. An acolyte kills the dream.”

With its first episode, The Acolyte introduces audiences to a new corner of the Star Wars universe, and it’s one where the stakes are higher than ever before. While the franchise has seen no shortage of death and destruction, it’s exciting to discover a series that is unafraid of killing off new characters as it unravels the mystery of why Mae has set out on this revenge-filled mission under the tutelage of a Sith Lord. Given the way their interaction ends, it’s safe to say that Master Indara is neither the first nor last Jedi who will die by Mae’s hand.

The Acolyte Amandla Stenberg shines as twins Mae and Osha in The Acolyte Episode 1.ProsEpisode 1 quickly establishes the high stakes of the series while balancing thoughtful character introductions.Stenberg taps into the duality of the Force, giving distinctive performances as both Mae and Osha.Leslye Headland’s writing and directing perfectly encapsulates the best parts of the Star Wars franchise. ConsThe episode works best as a two-episode debut, as Episode 2 helps to really connect things together.

The Acolyte premieres June 4 on Disney+ with its first two episodes, followed by new episodes released weekly.

Watch on Disney+