Hand-Wringing About 'Star Wars: The Acolyte' Has Nothing To Do With Lore
Closed mindedness and bigotry in all but name
Spoilers incoming.
“People are really complaining about last episode of The Acolyte.”
Me, raising my eyebrows. “Oh? You’ve heard?”
My wife is my litmus test for when something has escaped the nerdy bubble I frequent and attained broader awareness. Unlike me, she doesn’t go in search of such morsels. Instead, they find her by way of the internet water cooler.
“Yeah,” she said, “they don’t like the way the story is going.”
It’s the complaint of every Star Wars fan ever. I’ve even been that fan, a time or two, when story was sacrificed at the altar of fan service or empty spectacle. But in this case, I had the high ground. The Acolyte’s only sin was trying to be different.
The Acolyte was bound to ruffle feathers because it’s firmly outside the status quo, and a loud subset of Star Wars fans only want the same Star Wars, always and forever. I was miffed but not surprised to find people on Reddit whining that Yoda hadn’t yet made an appearance, and sharpening their pitchforks in anticipation of never seeing him at all.
The idea that every new Star Wars must include people and places already deeply familiar is the root of the issue. We’ll come back to this.
Fans on Reddit complained — predictably — that the Jedi ringleader was not Yoda but a green-skinned woman (Rebecca Henderson). To give the appearance of credibility to their vitriol, they protested on the grounds that Henderson is the wife of Leslye Headland, The Acolyte’s writer-director, and thus, nepotism. I’m sure the fact that she’s a lesbian had nothing to do with it.
The L word lays at the heart of this week’s teeth-gnashing.
The third episode involves a coven of Force witches who are neither light nor dark side. They just want to exist, on their own, without Jedi intrusion. It seems like a small ask. Just let us kick it on a remote planet. But that’s not how the Jedi of this era operate. They travel the galaxy, looking for any children that have talent for the Force, and take them to their monkish temple at the center of the galaxy, never to return.
This sets up all sorts of interesting questions about the Jedi. We get to see the traditional good guys in a slightly less favorable light. It’s a tricky balancing act, one the show manages gracefully. The Jedi aren’t outright abducting kids, but they exude a clear sense of, “you will let us test your children, whether you like it or not.”
The Force witches don’t like it.
Why would they? Why would anyone? But they go along with it because they’re not trying to beef with Jedi, who number in the thousands. There are only a few dozen witches. They’re literally just trying to survive.
That survival means they’ve needed to take some drastic actions.
I don’t know where Force witches come from — is it a Jedi-like program of testing and assimilation, or is it hereditary — but there’s no ignoring one simple yet obvious fact: They are all witches. Ain’t a dude in sight.
It raises questions about where these witches came from, in a chicken-and-egg sort of dilemma. But what is clear is the future of the coven is at stake. Which is why Mother Aniseya (Jodie Turner-Smith) took matters into her own hands, in ways and means that aren’t at all clear or important, but obviously involve Force mumbo-jumbo.
Enter the twins, who were conceived without the assistance of a man.
It’s less immaculate conception than Force-assisted IVF, and thus, the sanctity of Anakin’s miraculous birth is preserved. There’s also a clear and obvious difference: Shmi Skywalker just became pregnant. She had no say in the matter. The Force rolled up in her womb, liked the digs, and decided to make itself comfortable. Shmi was the vessel, nothing more. It happened to her.
Mother Aniseya made it happen.
How is unclear, exactly, but how is never really the interesting part of these stories. Best guess is she manipulated the Force to make babies within her partner’s womb. It’s clearly a no-no — the witches are more than a little freaked the Jedi will figure out what they’ve done. But desperate times, and all that.
It’d also be good to recall this is a sci-fi universe where select people have magic powers due to microscopic organisms in their blood. In such a place, practically anything should be considered possible.
All this is goes right over the angry mob’s head, who just see Disney “gaying up” their Star Wars by introducing a lesbian couple who found alternate methods of insemination. Meanwhile they’re totally fine with Anakin’s Christ-like birth — which, to be honest, is one of the dumbest things Star Wars has ever done.
Anakin’s birth was so contrived, many fans during the Prequel years convinced themselves that Palpatine engineered the whole thing. (Fans love to invent ways Palpatine was playing 4-D chess, when in fact, most of his plots are flimsy and subject to happenstance.) This position solidified after Palpatine told Anakin about Darth Plagueis.
Darth Plagueis was a Dark Lord of the Sith. He was so powerful and so wise, he could use the Force to influence the midi-chlorians to create… life.
Looking past the fact that Palpatine was obviously telling Anakin whatever he needed to hear to get him on Team Sith, Palpatine’s supposed involvement was confirmed to be hogwash. Anakin was conceived by the Force. Whether or not Darth Plagueis could manipulate life is immaterial. It’s an interesting anecdote, possibly, if true. Nothing more.
So, again: It’s fine if a baby is conceived by the Force accidentally — or, at least, without the involvement of a person — but if a powerful Force user manipulates the Force to make a baby, not okay? Unless it’s Palpatine puling strings from the shadows, or a name-dropped but never seen Darth Plagueis, then okay. Do I have that right?
I can respect concerns about breaking pre-established story rules if they’re warranted. The Rise of Skywalker introduced “hyperspace skipping,” which is as dumb as it sounds. It makes no sense, logically or based on everything we’ve ever seen in Star Wars. It cheapened the movie.
The witch pregnancy fits Star Wars, and not only because the rules of the Force are wonderfully pliable. There is precedence, established by the films: Darth Plagueis. And this is a freaking galaxy where the Force has been used for millennia. The idea that Plagueis is the first and only person to figure this out is rather preposterous.
But let’s be real about lore, shall we — the lore is only ever what the story needs it to be. It’s like the rules of Whose Line is it Anyway? — everything is made up and the points don’t matter.
Lore isn’t chiseled onto stone tablets, it’s hastily scrawled on coffee-stained napkins. Which is how you get something like Luke and Leia kissing in The Empire Strikes Back and being outed as siblings in Return of the Jedi. George Lucas was laying down the rails while the train was already moving. Lore only becomes lore after the fact, when people start devoting their lives to analyzing the story. No shade, I do it too. But that’s the truth.
So I can’t help but roll my eyes at fans wringing their hands over the damages caused to the lore. Bringing up The Last Jedi is always a sore point with these people, but it fits: Remember when Luke spent most of TLJ bemoaning the Jedi ways and wishing the quasi-religion dead, but panicked when he thought the sacred text books had been destroyed? That’s what this feels like. It’s performative, because it’s not really about the lore at all.
See if you can spot the theme from the memes that popped up this week.
The problem isn’t really that someone beat Darth Plagueis to the punch or the lore ramifications thereof — which, again, lol. The problem is who did it: Lesbians.
I don’t know how you can read it any other way.
The complaints boil down to the same thing every time Star Wars dares to try something different. In summary: “Not my Star Wars.” Too feminine, too different, and now, too gay. I honestly think these fans would be content watching subtle variations of their favorite trilogy for the rest of their lives. For them variety is not the spice of Star Wars life; it’s something to be actively shunned.
They don’t see these new stories as additive, or even optional. (You can actually just pretend something doesn’t exist — hello, The Rise of Skywalker — and go on living your life, and somehow the world will keep spinning.) Instead, they see The Acolyte as subtracting from what came before. And since Star Wars fans tie their own sense of self to the franchise — again, guilty as charged— anything that threatens the sanctity of Star Wars is a personal affront.
The irony is they’ve lost sight of the Jedi way — compassion, serenity, harmony — and have given themselves over to the Dark Side. Not only in their Sith-like, “If you’re not with me, you’re my enemy,” stance, but even that they’re hate-watching The Acolyte in the first place. Remember when Kylo Ren kept punching his wound to fuel his anger in The Force Awakens? It’s basically the same thing.
Anger, fear, aggression; the dark side of the Force are they. ~ Yoda
I’m not saying The Acolyte is perfect. For all the build-up about the disastrous fire, I don’t think what actually happened warranted all that Jedi guilt. (To the point that one guy — who I refer to as Amish Jedi — decided to off himself.) Mae’s motivation for setting the fire in the first place is really contrived and more than a bit melodramatic. Also: who knew stone could burn so well? In general, the show leans a little YA for my tastes.
I’m glad it exists, and that it dares to do something — anything — different. I’m tired to death of Skywalkers and the same 40-year window in a franchise that has literally all the time and space to play in.
It’s just kinda amazing how this galactic fairy tale inspires such small-minded thinking.
And by amazing, I mean sad.
I'm glad there is at least one of the original SW fans sharing my "Enough with the Skywalkers" feeling. Having a "cinematic universe" is good for telling different stories, not the same one over and over again.
It blows me away that that’s the takeaway from this show - I kind enjoying it