Star Wars: The Acolyte Episode 6 Review – Following Through Nothing

Star Wars fans love to see explorations of different aspects of the Jedi and Sith, especially their unique perspectives on the force. But only when those ideas being explored complement what’s come before within the Star Wars franchise, that help make it all intriguing to viewers. Yet when it appears to be aimless and purposeless, things begin to fall apart. The sixth episode of Star Wars: The Acolyte feels like a slower episode that attempts to explore what the show’s initial pitch was, but doesn’t do much by the end. Outside a few boundary-pushing moments, The Acolyte continues to suffer from poor writing and confusing character actions that have held everything back from truly being interesting. As much as the previous episode tried to set up tension for everyone, nothing is followed through satisfactorily.

Episode 6 picks up shortly after the events of the lightsaber duel between Qimir and the group of Jedi knights led by Master Sol. Osha was knocked out and left with Qimir, while Mae switched places with Osha and left with Master Sol. Qimir takes Osha to a mysterious planet where he hides away from everyone, while Sol tries to get in contact with the Jedi Order in space. As his calls for help suffer from interference, Mae cautiously tries to engage with Master Sol and kill him. At the same time, Osha has some tense interactions with Qimir about his past and why she had decided to become Jedi. Both want to turn the two sisters to the other side, hinting at terrible things that happened in their past. But as this is going on, Master Vernestra arrives at the planet Khofar and discovers the aftermath of the events of the clash between the Jedi and their mysterious attacker.

The episode drags at a much slower pace than the previous one, with not much happening overall. The conversations between Qimir and Osha have more interesting elements to them, but the overall interaction between them still isn’t that great. There are hints of good writing that involve how the Sith may seduce others to their cause, or the points they make against the Jedi. However, much of what Qimir points out appears to be confusing, especially when there’s a severe lack of insight into his past and the constantly flipping motivations of Osha.

It’s not clear exactly what she wants, nor her true intentions in any of the situations she has been part of within the show. The ending of the episode has her wearing Qimir’s helmet after he explains its purpose, but it’s not clear why she does this or why she wants to do this. The episode, and The Acolyte as a whole, have not done a great job showing or explaining why this would happen.

Back on Master Sol’s ship, his conversations with Mae are no better than everything else we’ve seen in the show. There’s good acting done here by Sol’s actor Lee Jung-Jae, but it’s undermined because of how little we know about what happened in the past. Neither he nor the show has given enough information to the audience to understand what he’s showing, let alone empathize with it.

This is further muddied up by the goofy spat that Mae has on the ship with both Bazil and Osha’s pip droid. She ends up resetting the droid and having it look evil, while Bazil scurries away after kicking Mae in the shin. The entire sequence felt out of place tonally and ended up going nowhere. Master Sol eventually discovers that Mae is the one he’s speaking to, but the episode never makes it clear whether Bazil told him or if he sensed that it wasn’t Osha. Bazil is there when Sol stuns Mae, but it’s not clear what exactly happened beforehand.

On the other hand, Vernestra Rwoh continues to feel purposeless within the show. She eventually gets the fragmented message sent out by Master Sol from another Jedi and decides to go to the planet Khofar, once again not telling the council anything. Although she discovers what happened to the group of Jedi she sent there, nothing comes of it. Vernestra’s impact on the main plot is still very minimal and has almost no bearing on what is going on with Osha and Mae, let alone the presence of the Sith with Qimir. While there are moments that allude she may know much more than she lets on, the series has yet to show or explain what her place is within all of these events. She simply feels like she’s there for the sake of it, or hopefully for something that will come within a future episode. The tease of her lightsaber whip being used was short, and had some possible connection to the scars on Qimir’s back he showed Osha on the other planet. But the connections don’t seem to be clear enough in a way to truly conclude one way or the other. Hopefully, within the last two episodes of this season of The Acolyte, things can be made clear and given enough detail.

While episode 6 of The Acolyte has enough problems with the main plot, there is one small thing that worked out decently. This episode finally gives Star Wars fans the formal introduction of cortosis armor into the canon, with Qimir explaining that it’s what makes up his armored helmet. However, this is done after seeing the armor in action before building up exactly what it is. At the same time, certain aspects between episodes 5 and 6 seem to lightly contradict each other with how the cortosis helmet works. Qimir explains that it blocks out other senses and lets the user connect with the force, but in the previous episode it’s shown to prevent Master Sol from reading Qimir’s mind while in battle. It’s not clear whether the helmet connects you with the force more or less, which would influence someone trying to probe the user’s mind. It would make more sense if it did, since it allows the user to become better connected with the force overall, but would lead to more narrative issues that the show has put itself in.

The ending of this episode of The Acolyte leaves many more questions open than it gives answers. Mae and Master Sol appear to finally get to a point where they can address what happened in their past, while Osha seems to be flirting with the idea of turning to the dark side. Once again, an apparent turn for her seems questionable, given the constant flipping of her motivations and sense of direction. The sound of her breathing after putting on Qimir’s helmet is reminiscent of Darth Vader, which is a nice nod to the franchise as a whole, but it offers nothing beyond that. We don’t know if that’s how Qimir sees things when he dons the helmet, let alone if Osha will be able to use the force better while wearing it. At the same time, the show looking to finally give answers to what happened in Mae and Osha’s past is a good thing. How it might connect everyone and wrap everything up is still very confusing, especially since there are only two episodes left for The Acolyte. It will be a very difficult task for the show to make it all make sense.

As a whole, episode 6 of Star Wars: The Acolyte is still a mediocre episode that is no better than what the series has offered before now. There’s less action and more dialogue between characters, which still suffers from awkward interactions and live delivery in most cases. Many of the big questions that the show has posed throughout the season have not been fully addressed, or reasoning made clear up to this point. While there are still promises of getting the full story of how things have unfolded for these characters, there’s little confidence in how satisfying the show will bring everything to a conclusion. There’s also the lingering worry about maintaining the integrity of Star Wars canon, which has been rocky at best with each episode of this series. Hopefully, there are still some intriguing aspects to The Acolyte in its final episodes, at least enough to show that there were some positive parts to enjoy along the way.

The Acolyte is streaming now on Disney+, with new episodes released weekly each Tuesday.