ACOLYTE Episode 7 REVIEW and REACTION + Vader Cameo EXPLAINED

the hell is going on I mean what the hell is going on hey welcome back screen Crush I'm Ryan Arie and let's talk about the acolyte episode s give us the baby I mean choice we are going to talk about The Good the Bad and the theories and later I'm going to hear from two Star Wars Scholars DOD sites and Heather antos and later on I'm going to tell you guys about the secret Darth Vader Cameo that I think is coming next episode say what but first this show was hard to figure out why whatever do you mean well like okay there was so much to love in this episode ask me like I loved seeing how this woman uses the force to pray on an immature Pan's weaknesses and seeing the visualization of a Jedi mind trick was awesome it takes something we've seen for almost 50 years and introduces it in a new light I also loved how the episode introduced weird new ideas like this and as soon as we get one question answered the show poses deeper Mysteries like why in the hell did she just turn into mist but I also think that the show is haunted by the same production problems that seem to affect all these Disney Plus shows which I'm going to talk about later but first let's get into some of the good stuff the force coven is so much more interesting than say the night sisters were in the show Ahsoka I loved how we got hints of their culture without everything being overexplained I hope we actually never get to hear this culture explained I like only seeing small slivers of their civilization and then getting to fill in the gaps with my own imag ination it makes them feel more real and it also invites other creators to add to the story years down the line now when I first tweeted about this episode I was surprised to see that so many people rush to say the show had bad writing cuz I actually think the writing is one of the best parts of the story the episode was very well balanced between each character's needs and desires I mean apart from torbin nobody really behaves selfishly everybody does what they think is best for others but because of cultural differences it ends in tragedy the show is also expanding on the possibility of the force I feel like we've been locked into this idea that the force is just used to move around rocks and see the future lifting rocks but in the animated shows comics and novels we see the force used to do so much more to bring back the spirits of the Dead to speak to lost souls to create life and there were hints of this in the sequel Trilogy we saw Luke use Force projection we saw kylo Ren and Ray use the force to pass physical objects to one another and we're seeing the force expanded in this show so I hope that other liveaction shows and movies take cues from this and expand on what possible for a force user and the Kaka fight was so cool I want to see more Savage wi Jedi fights so this fight along with the wirework from episode one also shows us what is possible for liveaction Star Wars to achieve and this is what I wanted from this show to move the franchise forward with new ideas because you guys know how much I love Star Wars and that's why we love designing Star Wars parody merch at our merch stores like the brand new the ability to speak doesn't make you intelligent and May 25th 1977 celebrating the release of a new hope we have kill sand and a jaw's parody shirt Fe featuring Darth teeth and this is along with the many other Star Wars parody shirts such as original trilogy somehow Palpatine returned good soldiers follow orders and many many more guys shopping our merch store is the best way to directly support our Channel and we love designing these shirts for you thanks for listening to the merch plug the links are below but my favorite part of this show is all the additions it's making to the cannon they introduced a virgin in the force which ties into Anakin Skywalker and it teases the beginning of Palpatine's master plan to cheat death to become immortal not to mention they're including material from the books like the species the tenant and cortosis but then I got to say why does so much of the show look so cheap sometimes we get these incredible location shoots that make conversations feel more real and more personal but then we get episodes like this one where a lot of stuff just seems flat I think this show has a comparable budget to House of the dragon and Visually there's just no comparison like compare Damon and Haren Hall to where this coven lives these are both meant to be like creepy locals but one feels damp and wet and real and the other feels like a stage or the scene where the witches possess Kaka it's shot wide with deep focus and flat lighting it just it looks like a TV show and I'm not just picking on the acolyte I mean we see this in the book of Boba Fett Ekko Ahsoka Loki this is a problem with how Disney plus budgets and plans their shows now I've talked about this before but I also think that 8 half hour episodes is just not doing these Concepts Justice lesle Hedland is a great writer Russian doll was awesome and I know they have the skills to do more and I want to see more torbin is the first character in the show who wants something that is not related to the main story and I empathized with him more than I ever did yord or even soul this is a show about Jedi investigating a murder and they were forced to solve the murder in the first episode I wish they could have taken their time you know like Andor a little later I'm going to tell you guys my Darth Vader Theory but first I'm so excited meeting here for the first time we have Heather anos group editor of publishing at IDW of Licensing at IDW and our very own Dodson whose work you can find here on the Channel all the time so guys I'm really excited to talk to you about The Good the Bad and the theories but do I want to start with you let's be nice let's go into the good things I caught some Flack on Twitter for saying I like the episode overall not saying it was perfect not saying it doesn't have flaws but I would like to hear from you what did you like about episode seven of the acolyte there there there are plenty of fun things here once we got a ton of answers to a lot of the questions that we were we were looking for about what really happened that night and I think a lot of our our theories about you know episode 3 really just kind of showing things from one side you know panned out to be very true and like the the biggest thing that I've Loved about acolyte so far in general has just been the fact that like we're showing Jedi in a very fallible light and I think this time like this whole episode was the point of that right this whole episode we saw you know Soul who's been kind of represented as this Obi-Wan esque character you know the always good kind of guy really start to make a mistake I mean at the whole episode like he's falling victim to his emotions he's just jus if Ying it in a very Jedi way he wants a Padawan and he's kind of trying to like you know make that fit what what's going on here right um and so like I I I think that like showing that and really starting to flesh out those characters and you know in that way differentiating them was was really entertaining to watch and uh so like that's that's really the heart and soul of of what what I loved about this episode and and as well as like the clarifications on a lot of the questions that we had uh I think I've been waiting for us to figure out like the dirty secrets in Soul's closet and so delivering on a lot of those were was pretty satisfying for me well I think killing a mom right in front of her kid is uh right up there with some of the worst things free anic and Darth Vader turn that we've ever seen a Jed I do um yeah you bring up some really good points I do think they did a good job of elaborating on some of the things that we saw before showing context and especially we talked about this in our Easter egg video Soul we kind of don't no was it the force that guided him this way was it his own selfish desire and one thing I talked about earlier that I loved about this episode is how it did present all of these people really s apart from torbin uh with the noblest of intentions and they all just screwed up and created a big mess not sure if presenting the sequence out of order was the right thing for telling the story though but before we get into our criticism which criticisms which are legion Heather anos what did you like about this episode we saw some really cool uses of the force in this episode right like from the the witches and their possession um their group possession to killing all whiches through their group possession you know we've never quite seen anything um like that before and as as dark and terrible and horrible as it all was um it was really quite cool I also I'm very curious as to what uh I forget the character's name Mama witch an AA I I wanted to know like more what she was about to do with you know before Soul kills her I thought that was really interesting and and I was like bummed that he killed her solely because I wanted to know what was about to happen I don't know we'll ever get Ditto and I did like how the show you know dod you U made a nod toward this the show did a good job of it has done a good job of introducing Mysteries and you go that's kind of interesting know who's the Sith guy and then when they answer that they're good at posing more questions which is kind of key to telling mystery and Heather like I said I'm with you like showing the internal what goes on inside of the Mind during possession was really cool that was really really cool and you know because that's one of the things that they've talked about a lot throughout this this series from the very very beginning you know I've known someone else who can do that I you know my mother could do that like blah blah blah blah um you know and we kind of saw it you know alluded to obviously in in episode three when it happened with torbin um externally but but but to see it from the inside out this time was really cool I also think you know um that the the lightsaber battles we saw like with kanaka and torbin and and soul soul and and the other uh wit you know his his defense and all that I thought that was some of the better combat we've seen so far in the show and part because it was just shot better uh I know that's a thing that we have been back and forth on uh throughout this series which is I think is really interesting the fact that there are some scenes where the combat is shot so excellently and others where it is shot so poorly and and I'm curious as to whether that's second unit first unit teams I don't know I'd be curious to see the breakdown of first and second unit period um there was something I talked about earlier uh where I mentioned like The Possession scene could have looked really great and creepy and weird and dark but it like a TV show yeah it was very tight it was like a wide shot it was flat lighting low contrast for some reason you would think you're filming like a for witch C like there's a shot in the Agatha trailer of U I don't know who they we don't know who they are yet but there's like an evil kind of devil nun or something that looks great and I was thinking that's how they could have shot this it could have looked like that it could have looked like really cool but instead these ideas are introduced that are very interesting and then kind of sit flat or when I say sit flat I mean literally flat on the screen because for some reason I don't know where their budget's going for this stuff like you compare it to house the dragon which I'm not a bookkeeper I don't work at Disney or HBO I don't know exactly what the budgets are but rumors are the budgets are comparable I don't know why house the dragon looks so great and I don't know why this show looks like it does you you know you reminded me of something earlier and Heather I want to ask you about this so the problem with a mystery show like or any show where sequences are presented out of order like book of Boba Fett you have to justify presenting it out of order whatever your reveal is it has to be such a good reveal that it didn't matter that you were sacrificing character development and what I mean by that is like Soul dod you mentioned we have soul and his motivations and it's all questionable it would have been great to have known about his desire to have a Padawan before he tracks down his former Padawan I think they lost emotional resonance from that so the reveal I don't know that it outweighed what we've lost in character development this entire time I kind of think that just knowing what would have happened prior to episode one would have gone a long way for us Heather what do you think about the structure of this show I struggle because I just don't know why it matters um you know when you have a mystery box the mystery has the reveal of the mystery has to affect the stakes in some way or shape or form right um you go back to lost where are they why are this on this island are they going to get off this island you know whether or not they stuck The Landing that Landing mattered and affected the entirety of the story right with this episode and kind of acolyte as a whole I'm constantly asking myself but why does this story matter um what is this reveal supposed to be telling us what is it how is it supposed to be affecting the characters ostensibly we can assume that this episode is soul telling May the truth right because that's how the previous episode ended he's like I have something I'm going to tell you you're going to listen cut to this episode and in my head I'm like I think she can assume that the Jedi killed everyone she was there when he killed her mother um she knows she started fire she was already killing all of the Jedi so why does this reveal matter how does this affect the story in anyway shape or form you know if this reveal was going to matter to anyone you think it would matter to be revealed to the Jedi Council um to vestra or to OSHA like I wanted OSHA to be discovering all of this information I thought that would have been a much cooler reveal well it did shed some light on why the Jedi were there cuz you think like it seems like the Jedi showed up to like stop this coven and assassinate them and snatch these kids when they weren't there for that at all so I think that at least to the show's credit they did explain well DOD what about you what is it about this episode that grinds your gears the the main thing that I think everyone's been complaining about is the pacing right and like the I liked episode three I liked what it was giving us I liked all the lore that it gave us as well um and like how it you know was connecting both you know the prequel trilogies and the sequel trilogies and kind of making it all one it felt very Star Wars but my big thing was was that like I enjoyed that but I enjoyed it in the context of seeing four episodes back toback because I binge things and otherwise this pacing for a week like people are going to sit on this for kind of like a week kind of thing and I don't know if that's that's really the way that the the best way to tell that part of the story right it's such an integral part of it and so while I did love all the answers that we got from seven and I did like all the the the different layers that we added to it and showing that episode 3 was just from one point of view and this is the other point of view there was a lot of retreading that I had almost felt like we didn't even need to do and we could have gotten you know like when I saw the runtime at first I was almost excited I was like hey this is cool we got we've been complaining about short run times for a minute right we finally get an episode where it's gonna have a decent amount of runtime and then we really don't move the story further I mean like we we we get some extra details on what's going back back here but like seeing at least some progress going on with with what's going on with soul and OSHA and things like that right spending the entire episode seven you know backtracking a lot of stuff to me pacing wise I was like they got a they have a lot of ground to cover and a lot of things to wrap up in that finale right and whether or not they leave some of it ambiguous or not I think is going to be up to what they choose to do but like as you were saying before every time they reveal something it opens up more questions well like we've got everything like all the the the secret stuff behind chir and like what his motivations are just still understand and EXP explor we need to understand how may came back right like how how she came back from that fall or anything else like that we need to understand vestra is up to something um and and there there seems to be uh something there um so like that's just a lot for them to get within this this next episode here and so like I am a bit concerned with with how that ends up you know the next episode's the finale I don't know what it is you know like I what what are we building to like I feel like we have to be bu a lightsaber fight with Kier and rra how do we get there I have no idea I don't know why those two would meet aside from so the story can happen right like that's there's a lot of things as you said there's a lot of ducks to to get in a row and line up and and resolve that I don't know how logically we'll be able to get there especially if it's a runtime again of like 33 minutes I hope it's not I'm really hoping even though a 33 minute video is Extreme easy for us to make I I hope it is balls to the wall hour and a half and we're struggling right up to the last minute to post our Easter egg video um DOD to your point about the the structure of this right Lesley hedin said they're going for rashan which we talked about in our Easter egg video the Kurosawa movie presenting things from different points of view fine but with with rashan you're seeing the same events but they play out so differently from different points of view it's like watching the story in a new way we like you said Heather we repeated a lot of Beats instead of doing that this time so I think it's a lot of it's too much rashan and I I hate to keep bringing up Andor because at this point saying Andor is the best Star Wars shows like saying your favorite band is the Beatles it's like no dub but those first three episodes of Andor they did a great job of establishing of of cutting between the flashbacks and the present day where the flashbacks would build up to a fever pitch and then they would lead into the next thing that happened it's kind of like screenwriting 101 but I don't think the structure of this show benefit fits the characters and the story in the way like I'll hold out to the finale but again I think that knowing all this information about soul in the first episode would have you know he would have mattered and I don't think a lot of these people to paraphrase you Heather like your doesn't matter the only person who matters for me right now at this point is torbin because torbin is the only person who had a relatable motivation that had nothing to do with the plot of the story yeah I would agree with that I think you know and again this does confirm this episode did confirm you know uh questions and and hypotheses we've had about Soul right this whole time like we' we've seen his emotion get to the better of him this whole time we've seen him teetering you know on that on on the dark side and the emotions and all of that this whole time so while the reveal I think was interesting I don't think you know it was all that surprising to be revealed now had the viewer known this secret the whole time you know it's one of those like have the viewer know something the characters don't know and have that hanging over us the whole time we're watching that right we're not in on the mystery at all um that these characters are unraveling and we're kind of just as lost as all of them in all of this and I think that's where the show was really struggling I and I I sound like a broken record when I say this but what I really want from this show is just longer runtime Dodd like I want yeah agreed just more from these characters I don't it's this it's a Jedi murder mystery show give us a couple episodes where they go different planets and we find out that you know yord is a little more conflicted we get a hint that he had this thing with May when they were padons but what was it it doesn't matter he's dead it's just moving at this lightning pace which again I am not even going to blame the the writers or even the production crew on any of this I think it's this Disney plus model I don't know where the money goes I think they're like the Pentagon I think that this money disappears into a Black Ops program that funds a new Disney park that they're secretly building in the midwest I don't know what's going on oh Cincinnati would be cool I hope they do that but um I I I'm kind of at a loss for why they structure shows and it's not just Lucas film this is Marvel as well I compare a lot of serialized mystery box shows to Supernatural season one I think Supernatural season one is a perfect example of how to do this well um you know that entire season I'd have to look up exactly how many episodes it is but uh you know they're all oneandone monster of the week type episodes um much like the first season of Mandalorian honestly which which is highly regarded as a very wellmade season one of one of Disney Plus's best in the Star Wars um realm and you know it it answers the Big Arc question of the season um and then every episode you spend time with the characters get to know the characters but it answers another question of that mystery and then at the end of that season you get the answer to that mystery and yeah it's the time we get to spend these characters that makes us care about them and be invested in their stories and because of how disjointed the storytelling has been we've not really been allowed to spend any substantial amount of time with any character D dapne kean's character probably the most and everything about them we're told we're told OSHA had attachment you know we're told that may has a grudge against the Jedi but we're not even shown why until episode seven we're we're told that failed right we're we're told that we don't know that we we haven't seen any of her time with the Jedi if we're getting any backstory you know I would have loved to see some of that time to understand her situation with them and to help explain some of the context of what happened in episode six you know um yeah I'd even argue that like the time that we have spent on stuff we've focused a lot on the wrong characters right like or or just spent too much time we've spent a lot of time focusing on uh May and OSHA as a child but like the real part in the gut of their story is what's happening to them now right how they're reacting to it today kind of thing and like those things could have been chopped and been you know little spliced moments within there and and and really give the the the bulk of the narrative to them uh and and their development and I think that would have that would have made a much broader story same thing with with yord like we spent a lot of time trying to get to know him just for him to get killed off same thing with um J Jackie three- hole punch girl we fleshed out her character you know I got a better understanding of her character right before she's killed off but the characters I want to know more about are kir right and uh a lot of the stuff that we getting About Soul like again as you're saying Heather they've already been teased very much down there we're finally just getting confirmation of those things but I would I would have loved to see more more depth there as well and like a lot of stuff on uh mother anaa and things like that like we've like we want to know about vestra right we haven't gotten much Spotlight on there so I feel like there's a almost a a Mis prioritization of of the the amount of time that spent on it as well hey but we know vra's partner really doesn't want to go on this mission right we do know that we spent a lot of time on that right right right I I do have a vestra theory I think it's going to justify what she's doing in the show um that relates to Canon that I'll talk about later on now I love talking to you guys because you both have such a keen understanding of story you know Heather you've worked and creating some of my favorite stories for years dod you you know written for screen crush and all these other things um but the reason we're here is because we are we are Star Wars people and you guys you I know you're meeting for the first time but we all have like our different Specialties in Star Wars which makes this a lot of fun to kind of bring you together and form this hive mind one thing I I truly love about this show is its contributions and what it takes from the Canon and most importantly gives back to the Canon the reason I like this episode so much is because I thought it introduced cool ideas into Star Wars I think as a show not told very well but what it's bringing into it is so much fun and I think it's very bitterly ironic that uh so many toxic Star Wars fans have criticized that aspect of the show which I think is where it's strongest but I we haven't seen a star war like this in a long time that is so much fun to craft theories around I think the last theory that was this much fun was who saved grou and in the end none of our theories are right and what they did was even better um so before I talk about my theories what do you guys have for me Theory wise about what's going on in the finale uh there's still a lot that's not answered I know gosh I mean it my I don't know I still think there's something to the soul chier you know uh Sun Moon thing of it all we we see know I just I don't think they're going to do anything of it but it's my like head C you know it's in my fantasy like you know we see soul soul is the one who turns to the dark side because he's so close as it is and it's clear that he and kimer have a lot lot of history though again we don't get any of that in any of the flashbacks but you think so he did say you didn't recognize me but I thought that was because he saw him in the shop I don't know um okay I like the sun moon thing though I had do you had mentioned thinking they have a connection but I hav really thought of I feel like there's something I don't know I just they wouldn't have named him that unless it was in I like that Heather that's fun we haven't talked about that in any of our videos even though means moon in Arabic well you know what uh every day is a school day um Don what about you do you got anything that you think is gonna be really fun they're gonna talk about I'll start with Darth zad because he's definitely my favorite um my favorite we've introduced here yeah he's he's so interesting and like I really really just want to know what's what's going on between him and soul and so maybe this theory is just fan Cannon for what I think uh could be it but I think like you know we had we've talked a little bit um I can't remember the the person's name who were you were talking about earlier the season who had the idea about the force projections right we see that with with uh Luke in The Last Jedi how he's able to pro project himself uh you know vast distances we we thought that that could be something of the case with uh with OSHA and and May and you know that seems a little less likely now with some of the stuff we've seen but also you know some of the stuff in episode seven kind of makes it feel like that could be the case too anyways but what if instead of it being OSHA and may that are Force projections of each other is it possible that soul and chimere are somehow Force projections of each other like what if Kim F was trying to or sorry with soul um in an attempt to get himself more in balance with the force tried to push his Dark Side away from him so much so that it became its own entity right that way it would be it explain why kir recognizes Soul because he is soul kir seems like a little bit of a mirror of soul in a lot of ways like soul is good for the wrong reasons in a lot of times and chimere's wrong for good reasons a lot of the time and so there's that that that par between them that I think there uh could be could be something so maybe he's some kind of uh my my hope is he's some kind of like force projection or or even just like the you know a purified version of of some of the the emotions that Soul was having especially when you look at the fact like what does kir want right now he wants a pupil he admits that right off the bat he's not ashamed of that to do it it's almost like if Soul had embraced those emotions that he was having instead of trying to be like no I'm a Jedi I'm just this because I care about these kids and all that kind of stuff and trying to like justify it if he just embraced it and said no I want a pupil right then like he would be kimere my my my first Theory would be be you know that that chimere shadow soul soul idea fingers crossed if we get some some more information on that episode in the finale I love the origin you came up with that it reminds me of um Adam Warlock in the early 90s when he got The Infinity Gauntlet and he expelled all the good and evil from himself and created two villains intently in the process that'd be kind of cool um again I I definitely think with those names being that which I can't believe I'm hearing the chimere moon thing for the first time I think there's definitely at least meant to be some kind of symbolic connection between them but yeah you can't deny though the theory crafting especially when you get into pagus and the forest diad and Heather do you think that's all fitting the Canon well I think so I you know there's so much especially with this particular time period that we just don't know um you know it's it's such a truly unexplored era of of Star Wars um which allows the creators to do all of this additive stuff in a really really cool way you know I did have an early early theory that perhaps kir was pagus like that was going to be our tieing in some way he might be he still could be uh who knows um you know I do think regardless of whatever gets revealed and wrapped up um in this next episode I do think we're going to have some sort of prequel tie in in some way shape or form oh I definitely think so and that's the theory that I want to talk to you guys about right now first I got to thank you Heather anos and Dodson sites you can find their Social Links below and there are great follows on all platforms please please please add them we refuse to pay anybody they only get paid in lpps so now I want to tell you guys what my big theory is about the finale of the show so like I said earlier my favorite thing about this show is its connections to established Canon and like Heather and Dodd were saying this is likely showing us Darth pleus is original plans for creating life and setting up Palpatine's return almost 200 years later but I think the finale is going to to explain one of the most confusing lines in the prequels you refer to the prophecy of the one who will bring balance to the force I've always thought this that if the Jedi thought the Sith were extinct why did they believe in an ancient prophecy that Anakin was the chosen one with all due respect must is he not the chosen one and the prequels were vague on what bringing balance actually meant and I think this show is proposing what that balance means because it's all about duality in the force cult seems to worship the yin-yang symbol showing balance in the force but here's the theory in this show we also have this weird subplot involving vesto where they specifically mentioned that she does not like hyperspace you get nauseous when you drop through hyperspace I don't get sick I find it unsettling so why did they choose vernest for this show instead of I don't know any other Jedi from the high Republic I think it's because in the new Republic books hyperspace allows vestra to have visions in the force she foresaw the creation of her light whip in a vision I think that while she is in hyperspace she is going to have this vision of one who's bringing balance and in this Vision she is going to see Anakin and Darth Vader just like how Vader appeared in Anakin's Vision on mortise in the Clone Wars and I also think this prophecy is going to be very vague and that vestra is going to misunderstand its meaning which Yoda basically implied here is he not to destroy the Sith and bring balance to the force a prophecy that Miss red could have been but the audience with the benefit of hindsight is going to understand her full vision and maybe this Vision will even include Rey as the chosen one not because she ultimately kills Palpatine but because Ray's creation is part of this whole process that might have created May and OSHA Palpatine sought to create his own virgins in the forest so he could exploit it to create eternal life for himself and Rey is the daughter of an offshoot of one of those experiments I just love how this show is tying together elements from the books the prequels the OT and the sequel Trilogy I think Disney Star Wars at its best can take all the elements that maybe didn't work in the movies and improve upon them for the Next Generation much like the Clone Wars did for the prequels so guys let me know what you thought of this episode down in the comments or at me on Twitter and if it's your first time here welcome to the Channel Please Subscribe and smash that Bell for alerts for screen Crush I'm Ryan Ary [Music]

Channel: ScreenCrush

Views: 149,237

Keywords: screencrush, heavy spoilers, new rockstars

Id: Hg6Hm-_q0N4

Length: 30min 52sec (1852 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 11 2024