Let's talk about what The Acolyte did right first:

• The action sequences ‒ particularly the finale fight between Sol and The Stranger ‒ are some of the most beautifully choreographed Force use we've seen to date. Yes, there are moments when the speed ramping gets a bit wearing, but the overall lean into a more Eastern cinematography, along with some incredible set pieces (that double-dodge back arch into spring-back was 🤯), makes this so much fun to just watch.
• Casting Manny Jacinto as the villain; he's phenomenal here, and I sorely hope we get to see some more of him in the future! A perfectly nuanced take on the subtleties of the Dark Side and the Sith.
• A deeper exploration of the Force in a Galaxy populated by many Force users allows for a lot more complexity and some fun little ideas.
• Stop motion critters! They get a little overused (as well), but they're a damn sight better than Porgs (and I don't even hate those little penguin dudes).

But okay, it was far from a slam dunk of a show. Pacing is a bit wonky, and an entire penultimate episode that was just reshoots of, what, episode three was just jarring. The plot isn't exactly winning any awards for innovation, either, and just about every "big reveal" is so obvious that none of them land. Even when you think "oh, they're clearly toying with me a little bit here" they go ahead and do something incredibly obvious with the costume or set design, such as Osha's descent and Mae's rise from the moment they switch clothes, neatly placing one in all black as she succumbs to despair and anger, whilst the other ends up in all white as she begins to realise that there is more to life than vengeance. We get it, you're going for the whole yin-yang philosophy, two-become-one, etc. etc.

I could have also used less obvious flaws for the Jedi, and did we really need the Senator to literally say "forgoing your emotions is not possible"? Was it not ham-fisted a message enough? Still, that is a really solid criticism of the Jedi as a concept, and one that I am broadly happy to see Disney exploring some more. Plus, bringing a Coven back into the fold that weren't clearly pure evil, and having a Sith character who is driven by something other than power lust or revenge, all meant that we could see how the Force means very different things to different people, so letting the Jedi reflect some more aspects of that as well ‒ whilst pointing out that everyone is ultimately falling short by just projecting their own biases onto the Force, rather than trying to view it holistically ‒ worked to some extent.

In actuality, the part that annoyed me the most wasn't the whole "we're holier than thou, but clearly also corrupt" angle, nor the boring characterisations of Jedi like Yord or Sol (whose actor, Lee Jung-jae, does a masterful job of bringing nuance to, having been given absolutely none to work with from a plot or dialogue perspective). Nor did I overly mind that we kept having moments that made us question if such-and-such a "good guy" was actually evil. No, the bit that bugged me was: when the heck was this meant to be taking place? It sets itself a mere hundred years before the fall of the Republic and the rise of Palpatine, and yet we have Wookie Jedi, we have light whips, we have confusion over the Sith. Isn't this the Old Republic? Wouldn't this show have been so much better if they'd just said "this is 1,000 years ago; the Jedi have no idea who the Sith are or what they are capable of; it is near the end of a Golden Age!" We could have actually seen all the many ways the early Jedi connected with the Force, and seen how freeing ‒ and how much more in tune with it ‒ they were. Then, with the revelation of the Sith, we could see how that same group of people ultimately caved to fear. How they exiled anyone that didn't fit a certain mould. How they cut themselves off from so much that the Force could offer, purely because they wanted to ignore that it could be wielded in other ways.

And my issue here isn't purely that we didn't get that much better show, but that they decided to confuse the canon and disrupt a bunch of really cool world building all for a single cameo shot in the final five minutes of Yoda. They don't even seem to be making a second season, so argh dammit!

All of that said, I hope that rumours of the show's cancellation are not true. I want more of Jacinto; I want to know whether that was Darth Plagueis skulking about in the shadows; I want to understand how Mae and Osha could be recombined or made whole or whatever. I felt like it set up some interesting questions, and I'd love to see some more of that fight choreography. I also want justice for Pip, because that memory wipe was just cold. Here's hoping 🤞