Star Wars The Acolyte Season 1 Review

[00:00:00] This is the Star Wars Podcast on TV Podcast Industries and we're here discussing Star Wars The Acolyte Season 1 Episodes 1-8. Welcome back fellow Acolytes. Oh I've always wanted to say that. This is TV Podcast Industries,

[00:01:21] this is the Star Wars Podcast and we are taking a sojourn back on Season 1 of The Acolyte from Episodes 1 straight through to 8 and our thoughts on the season. I am one of your hosts, John.

[00:01:40] I'm your host, Derek. And rounding out this trio of masters but there should be a rule of two. We'll see. I am Chris. We'll see how long your internet lasts for Chris and we'll

[00:01:52] might the end of it, it might be just two. Yeah, this too. Only Joe and Chris's internet's amazing. Yeah, no it's not. Not today. We will see how this ends. Absolutely yeah welcome back to the Star Wars

[00:02:05] Galaxy far far away and even further back in time. Absolutely. Miles back in time. The first live action old republic. That's right. Yeah, yeah it is. Old joids, old light saber tech, old Jedi robes. Yeah everything's old but it's new again.

[00:02:24] Absolutely more uniform Jedis. The Jedis looked way more standard, proper kind of like priest sort of standard robes. Yeah, the one thing I was going to say is they added some color to the uniforms they had under but those brown robes seriously I was just like come on

[00:02:42] give us a bit of gray give us a bit of black in there you know maybe a bit dash of white. Absolutely. But it's just like it was just like guys not everything needs to be a brown robe.

[00:02:52] I understand Obi-Wan Kenobi set it down when he was in Tatooine and that was where we got it from but come on give me that color. But he was in a desert, he was in a desert,

[00:03:03] he was trying to blend in. Yeah, I know where's that pink robe? Absolutely. But overall I think that's kind of the point of the Acolyte show and where we're setting this story,

[00:03:14] this tale of the Jedi because they are in power they are effectively the police force for the galaxy seemingly you know so they are much more uniformed as you say there's even some interesting touches on padawans all have the same uniform and then when they move on to

[00:03:30] master they get to change the uniform they get to get that brown cloak as well so there's interesting touches in the background that I'm sure we probably would have gotten into if we were

[00:03:39] doing this as we normally do our podcast on one episode at a time. This time we're covering the entire season we've mentioned before the reason for that is because the boys came out

[00:03:46] at the same time and we didn't have any capacity to cover both shows at the same time weekly at the moment we've got a lot going on so we are going to look back

[00:03:55] at the season of the Acolyte and talk about some of your feedback that we got in on the final episode for the Acolyte as well. Absolutely and I for one will not be looking

[00:04:03] back in anger. There you go John there you go little little winks just to kick us off. But before we get into our spoiler filled review of season one of the Acolyte please remember fellow Acolytes to pop on over to our website at tvpodcastindustries.com where you can

[00:04:25] subscribe to the podcast on any Acolyte or Padawan podcast player of your choice. And you can also find our coverage of every episode of The Bad Batch over there you can find our coverage of Ahsoka the live action series over there as well and you can also get

[00:04:40] our coverage of this year's Tales of the Empire as well a really good animated series with just eight episodes yeah really good so yeah loads of stuff over there as well as the boys that we were covering during this period as well exactly of the old republic

[00:04:58] yes exactly exactly and of course if you want to get in contact with us on any of the shows that we cover you can of course send your emails into feedback at tvpodcastindustries.com

[00:05:12] or you can join us over on our facebook group at facebook.com forward slash groups forward slash tv podcast industries absolutely yeah we'd love for you to join us over there on

[00:05:24] the facebook group the spore and spore up post up for each episode actually you can go over there if you want to discuss individual episodes with all of the other fellow Acolytes chat

[00:05:31] about them over there and all the other shows that we're covering so you can chat about any of the shows after they've aired as well yes but let us get into our spoiler filled

[00:05:39] discussion Derek who gave us what were when how and why four episodes one to eight because we're covering all the episodes is a lot here so I'm just giving you the general facts about each

[00:05:51] of the people that are involved the show order for this show is Leslie Hedlund probably most well known as the co-creator of Russian doll the Netflix series with Natasha Lyonne excellent two

[00:06:01] seasons of that show really really well worth a watch if you want to see something else outside of the Star Wars universe that Leslie Hedlund was involved in but apparently she was asked the

[00:06:08] premiere of the rise of Skywalker when she was first approached to take on a Star Wars series and our first idea that she came up with was I'd love to go into the old republic and see

[00:06:18] the bad guys and see their side of things their side of the tales that all started off the idea of the Acolyte that long ago excellent yeah I think it's really good take actually yeah I know that

[00:06:30] there was some bioware sort of uh old republic that's the other public yeah video games which the adverts for them the cinematic adverts for them were just incredible and then you got

[00:06:44] and then you got the game no no so bio wears original night of the old republic and one and two they they were fantastic very old looking yeah for dated now yeah for back then they were amazing

[00:06:59] fantastic rpgs there is the star wars the old republic not the night of the old republic but the old republic which is the mmo which is still going to this day no longer produced by bio

[00:07:10] wear that do some of the best cinematic oh yeah CGI based and there's one or two there's a whole they did this whole almost a movie you can watch on youtube yeah it's brilliant which is about

[00:07:23] two brothers and like their the light and dark and all that yeah fantastic and then there's the game on that one yeah I will agree the MMO and then there's the game but the original

[00:07:34] two rpgs for as a og gamer back when xbox came out and night of the old republic came out I was like this is the bomb because back then I actually said this is the bomb yeah yeah can't agree with you

[00:07:50] on that one but I get where you're coming from yeah you can't play a game at that level of just gorgeousness cinematic yeah but yeah like I would hope I would hope that there will be some

[00:08:06] inspiration kicking off now that we can set lots of things in the old republic universe like new games you know we don't have to always keep going back to the Skywalker saga now so hopefully

[00:08:15] we'll get more games of the quality of the Jedi survivor and games that have that quality of graphics and that quality of gameplay set in the old republic I hope that's something that

[00:08:25] they do do in the future so really cool that Leslie headland went back to this era for her first star wars show it's a really good choice I think yeah and let's go through the directors for the

[00:08:36] show Leslie headland herself directed the first two episodes of the season for for the show stamp putting her stamp on the season Cognata another director for the show a Korean American director directed episode three and episode seven Alex Garcia Lopez directed episodes four and five

[00:08:51] and previously he directed episodes for the Punisher daredevil the cage and the witcher all the witch we've covered here on tv podcast industries and finally hannel cold pepper directed episodes six and eight of the series previously directed two episodes of Gotham John and three

[00:09:03] episodes of Star Trek Picard again two other shows that we've covered here on tv podcast industries it's always nice to see our kids go into the world and direct different shows that we're covering isn't it massive other universes I mean certainly for hannel cold pepper you know

[00:09:18] Gotham is a good distance in the past a bit like the old republic with with regards to our podcasting now ten years jump this stage yeah it certainly was um I think yes the end of February 2014

[00:09:32] indeed exactly exactly um the writers room for the show is stacked as well again Leslie headland the showrunner is uh leading up that writers room uh jasmine florida as writer assistant on

[00:09:44] falcon and the winter soldier um and then moved on to become one of the writers in the writers room in here uh kora dana another one of the writers charmeine de grace was a writer on house of the

[00:09:52] dragon season one as well jason mccollough another writer jocelyn bio who is a writer on russian dull with the showrunner claire kichel who was a writer and story editor on the watchmen of their excellent show that we covered here on the podcast gen richards as well eileen shim

[00:10:07] who's a writer on house of the dragon season one and stayed on for season two as well and uh that's which is airing at the moment as well and finally cameron squires is the final

[00:10:16] member of the writing room and he was a writer and story editor on one division cool so look at the talent you got in there you got russian dull from netflix you got house the dragon the excellent

[00:10:27] game of thrones spin off um falcon the winter soldier in one division two great marvel shows as well as as watchmen one of the best comic book adaptations or comic book extended

[00:10:38] universe stories i guess yeah that's it there so great stuff really good stuff so john do you want to tell us what they gave us in a star wars way with your synopsis of the acolyte season one

[00:10:49] sure a long time ago in a galaxy far far away a century before the rise of the galactic empire the jedi order and the galactic republic baskin era of unprecedented peace yet darkness looms

[00:11:05] as jedi master indara falls victim to a mysterious assailant osha anisaya a former padwan turned mech neck is wrongfully accused of the crime and pursued by jedi knight yord fandar and his padwan tacy lower as fate intervenes osha discovers a shocking truth her presumed dead twin sister may

[00:11:30] is alive and the true culprit jedi masters sol vanestra rower and padwans jackie london and yord embark on a perilous quest to unravel the conspiracy meanwhile may under the influence of a shadowy master wages a deadly game against the jedi targeting masters torbin indara sol

[00:11:54] and the wookie kelnaka on the desolate planet of brendak the origins of the twins are revealed tied to a coven of force wielding witches led by mother anisaya a fateful decision by osha to

[00:12:09] embrace the jedi path set in motion a chain of events that will shatter the galaxy but as the hunt for may intensifies a fallen jedi known only as quamir emerges as a formidable adversary the

[00:12:25] fate of the jedi order hangs in the balance as the dark side of the force grows stronger a new era dawns filled with treachery loss and the uncertain path of destiny and yoda

[00:12:39] and deas poorly so ancient that was he has no wonder he said you know when 800 years old you are look as good you will not you know like so he's obviously going to be there 100 years before

[00:12:55] he never looked good because he was a green kind of thing i know i was i was watching at the second time uh the last episode i know we're skipping literally to the last second of the show but

[00:13:06] we're talking about the whole episode but i was watching it going oh they didn't even put like you know a brand a brand hair to pay on them or anything like that he still got wispy gray hair from the

[00:13:15] back you know he doesn't even get the lines but he still got wispy gray hair 100 years beforehand you could have had long flowing locks done in a perm that could have been the i was i was expecting

[00:13:25] him to have like you know a lot of them have that kind of ponytail with the actual metal bits i was expecting him to have like a white ponytail with bits down the back of his neck with his ear

[00:13:38] sticking it basically i was expecting that with a mohawk like this was yoda during his punk years yes right or maybe a mullet in a moustache yeah hey if he's gonna go mullet he's gonna go full

[00:13:50] bot ass on it he's going bot ass the f1 driver he's going in the ozzy style mullet business up party in the back yoda that is so awful that is so awful i was thinking maybe ben he would be

[00:14:05] doing kind of a benjamin button thing where he was just taller maybe maybe but all i'll say when 700 years old you are chris maybe you want to be going through your punk phase at that stage

[00:14:18] maybe 900 is the limit right but like 700 that's a dick it's the midlife crisis moment he's bought a Porsche he has a couple of them an affair who knows what he's going through right this is midlife crisis

[00:14:32] yoda so we've literally talked more about yoda than we have about the series and he's in it for two seconds right at the end yeah exactly so let's get into it let's get into our discussion about the

[00:14:43] acolyte um where do you guys want to start what's it where where do you want to kick it off do you want to give an impression of what your overall feeling in the series is you want to

[00:14:51] keep that towards the end as we talk about some of the big pushes that happen in the series what would you what would you want to start with i think it'd be good to have you know just kind of

[00:15:00] overall thoughts on it you know yeah okay there you go you know i enjoyed the show at the end of the series um by the end of the series um i would think my biggest challenge with this show

[00:15:14] is setting a conspiracy show in the star wars universe is not doing the showrunner or star wars as a whole any favors because star war fans are out there and they want clues they want to

[00:15:26] be able to to be told things that only they'll know um that they've been so invested in star wars for 40 years that they want to be the ones that go well i know who that character is and i know

[00:15:36] who that character is there are only three characters including yoda that have ever appeared outside of this show um master vernestra has appeared in one novel we have yoda and we

[00:15:49] have drath plague us who appeared in the background in the final episode so those are the only three characters that appeared and everything else is brand new for this show if you do that you release

[00:15:57] the show weekly the star wars fans are going to attack you for changing things and by the end of the series everything that was complained about by fans watching the show had been resolved but

[00:16:08] of course that is not going to dear yourself to a massive fandom like star wars and i'm not saying you can't do different things in the star wars universe but doing it has a massive risk

[00:16:18] attached to it so i don't know whether this was the best show set in the old republic that they could have done to kick things off but by the end of the series that had resolved into a show i actually

[00:16:29] did enjoy i liked the idea of it but when you're trying to keep information back from an audience to have a big reveal at the end um i don't know whether that was managed very well for my expectations

[00:16:41] week to week i don't know whether it stuck with it in fact to be honest if it was a completely different show like for example if this was like that crappy rebel moon movie that was based off a

[00:16:50] star wars script that uh sax neither did i didn't get through half an era of that movie because i wasn't invested in the star wars universe or the universe that he was trying to to build so

[00:16:58] i don't know whether i would have stayed with acolyte if it wasn't star wars acolyte because of how it was presented um so but i really did enjoy it by the end and the reveals

[00:17:07] that were there how about you chris i'll jump in um i this for me suffered from that they haven't learned how to tee up an end of an episode um this felt written in a strange way and i don't

[00:17:22] under it don't know we know the mcu can do that cliffhanger now amazon do it best netflix actually pioneered it like we've seen it with the umbral academy and like the daredevil show

[00:17:35] and the the fender shows that we covered where they set up the episode and it's you pay off what just happened in the last episode you tee up some good stuff and then you resolve part of it

[00:17:48] and then you leave a cliffhanger to basically want make you want to either binge into the next episode or build up enough conversation that the next week you're gagging to know what happened

[00:18:01] and you build this fervor and people come to a podcast to speculate and discuss and discuss and review what happened this unfortunately parts of this didn't make me go fervor you go oh my god

[00:18:17] i want to go and i'm dying to the next episode um so i did watch this in chunks of two and kind of as i kind of caught up in pit and i but i wasn't we didn't actually just and that's how i knew

[00:18:29] i wasn't heavily invested no let me before i finish that sentence i enjoyed it by the end similar to you there by the end of the show i was like you know what that was actually good

[00:18:39] looking back as a whole yeah it was good but we didn't actually discuss it much as off air between ourselves we were watching it but we weren't hey did you get this did you check this or like

[00:18:51] did you know that this was oh my god and that's how i knew i wasn't it wasn't connecting as much with me yeah and it should i love the older public i played night of the public one and two

[00:19:05] back to front quite a lot i've started some of the comics that they're running in this in the high republic stuff so all of this should connect with me basically with the jeter height

[00:19:16] of the power like the cool whips of the new jedi the jedi with lightsaber things like that where i'm like but unfortunately parts of it just didn't really come together in a way that i think really

[00:19:32] should have melted this felt like it was trying to do a criminal like you said that mystery noir where it's like it's trying to be almost a cop procedural mystery but but isn't that the weird

[00:19:46] part about it i don't i don't want to go too much into this because no john will want to hear your opinion is but isn't that the weird part about it you think when it's setting up the

[00:19:53] show that it is this mystery noir but actually what you think are your detectives are the people that committed the crime in the first place basically so that's all great twists if you're doing something

[00:20:04] like that but i don't i think the reason it isn't connecting or didn't connect and the reason why we didn't all discuss it together chris was because there weren't those moments of did you see luke

[00:20:12] skywalker turn up on that episode did you see chubac up here on that episode there weren't any of those moments because it's so disconnected from the star wars universe and the treatment of

[00:20:20] the storyline is so different from anything we've seen from the live action or animated shows before as well so there there um yeah john what about you so just before i do you get that yes yeah before i do

[00:20:32] actually say that it's just chris you did have a steery griffin moment there in your monologue where you said cool whips and i love the cool whip yes so i did quite like that and so i'm kind

[00:20:44] of with you two to be honest on this i think by the third or fourth i was like i don't know what i'm supposed to feel about this show yeah yeah and then you got the and i can't remember which episode

[00:21:00] exactly it was i think it was episode five and it was like that was okay this has sort of this has brought it dragged it into curing about this okay episode five was the episode set where we

[00:21:16] where we finally got to see the sith master i guess we we think so that's the that the big moment i guess exactly and and i think that's the thing it's so divorced from the star wars law that we

[00:21:28] know yet it is obviously in that world and there's plenty of other material around that i think if you're bringing it to this point you want to invest in the characters and it was really difficult to

[00:21:42] understand that i lots of stuff i loved in here around the convergence and you know effectively yeah um uh osha and may you know being of one like the idea you know one of them is evil one

[00:21:58] of them is good and yeah exactly so i kind of really like that i think it's also just the fact that you know it depends how you get to the reveals that they do as well and i just felt

[00:22:14] rather than trying to do a big reveal in a era that isn't that well known to a lot of people go through it like you know like brilliancing Darth Plagueus but they're just like just have him there

[00:22:30] yeah like you know and the interactions and how it's all complicated or whatever but i mean anyway like in the end i got to really like enjoy this i mean who doesn't like you know

[00:22:44] sexy siths as well i mean or even just that notion of sexy you know it it's kind of it's an important dynamic that actually potentially these two um you know the two and have some kind of

[00:23:00] chemistry there um or but it wasn't even that it's just they felt like they were becoming friends weirdly so anyway there's a lot i really enjoyed in this but i don't know whether i really thought

[00:23:12] it sort of hit it didn't hit the ground running i think it needed to be less sort of massive revelatory at the end and have those moments at each episode being revelatory like you say chris

[00:23:26] and i think well let's let's talk about it because there are reasons within the writing as to why all the reals happen at the end of this series so let's let's talk about that a bit more

[00:23:34] in depth but the other i suppose the other aspect of it as i said set a mystery show where you're keeping all those reveals back in an era where we don't know anything about the characters

[00:23:43] makes it very difficult to connect with them but also another big writing choice that they made is having the unreliable narrator we're following characters who were being told are good because

[00:23:54] they're Jedi are being told are bad because they're Sith and by the end of the series they've all switched positions to good and bad to different effects that all the all the good guys are bad

[00:24:05] guys all the bad guys are good guys by the end of the series they're all interesting ideas but very difficult to latch on to uh to those characters like i remember one of the first

[00:24:14] things i saw about the acolyte after it aired we were away on holidays and didn't see the episodes until after we got back but when the first thing i saw was they put karyan

[00:24:21] moss in the poster and then killed her in the opening scene that's it i'm out i'm gone from the show and she was in four more episodes but because of the narrative way that they chosen to tell the story

[00:24:32] you instantly turned off people who tuned in to watch karyan moss so it was a really interesting experiment for for star wars but i'm just not too sure they're connected with the people that they wanted to actually watch exactly and i think even having the two flashback episodes

[00:24:48] well we'll definitely talk about that in our first saber point as we usually do we pick our saber points which will be things that should cover this time the entire series of the show so let's start off with saber point number one

[00:25:08] so really the show as as we said already and kind of the intro there the show is set around a central mystery which you're trying to discover and let's just talk about that i suppose

[00:25:17] is our big point what's the big reveal in the show the big reveal is actually um talked about right at the end of the series when osha and may are splitting up for the final time they say

[00:25:26] their rhyme to each other the you are with me i am with you always one born as two that in itself is a mass reveal it's it's revealed that may an ocean were created from the force by their

[00:25:37] mother they aren't twins at all they're actually one being created from the force split into two so not twins not sisters they're the same being split into two which is an interesting reveal at

[00:25:48] the start and sol was concerned about that about the amount of power being in the hands of someone that's outside of the controls of the jedi accidentally killed their mom and thought that may

[00:25:59] was dead so because the mom and may were dead the people that were involved in the creation of of may and osha only osha left they decided to hide this fact from the rest of the galaxy

[00:26:09] there's nothing to prove that this creation happened um so it's hidden and he did this at the request of master and dara who's a karyan moses character and her padawan had gone a bit crazy

[00:26:21] from them being on the planet for me too long russian rushed in torbina had rushed in uh and almost got himself killed and then as a reaction to all of this that's what sets off may on her

[00:26:33] killing spree effectively going after uh killing them all because uh sol has covered this up and dara's covered this up torban and uh the wookiee jedi they've all covered this up and so

[00:26:45] that's kind of the big reveal at the end of that because of that denial um so may trains with the dart side trains with kmyr and gets her revenge on all of these jedi so that's the that's the

[00:26:54] big reveal at the end the central mystery the big reveal the end of the story what did what did you think of the that being the big reveal and revealed in basically episode seven and eight

[00:27:02] of the show that this is everything that's actually happened like i i did like this reveal i mean firstly i love that they had witches here i mean i think on brandoc you know again i think

[00:27:14] coming from uh isoka i think having the witches of dathomir it's really interesting and seeing this again again very powerful um witches and very powerful abilities to control the force with you know this convergence that they were investigating here and it's all just it's

[00:27:37] almost a tapping into the force we've heard about the force as a as a something that penetrates and binds you as a way it was always talked about before here they're talking about

[00:27:44] pulling on the threads of the force to use it and gain its power that way so i really like this kind of um idea um for me right up there uh with you know force wielding witches

[00:27:58] the the death of these i mean again it plays into sort of our coverage of the bad batch from the last season as well where you know you saw the empire taking young force sensitive people and different

[00:28:13] species from their mothers and here you have the same thing happening again with the jedi and again that kind of you know similarity uh with the sith but also it being looked on as more

[00:28:27] pious but in this instance it's not because you have this coven of witches effectively wiped out for seemingly being an you know bad evil dangerous even though you know the jedi for all their supposed calmness and meditation aren't able to talk to them i like the internal conflict

[00:28:52] around that within the group itself i mean i do think torbin was a little bit winchy just which i was really surprised at from the actor who you know has been in uh game of thrones and in

[00:29:07] was it 1916 1917 the the movie the and and normally a great actor yeah i just felt his character was really sort of whiny and actually it's because like he just wanted to get back to

[00:29:22] co-rescent um that effectively everything goes belly up and the whole situate i just that some of the motivations didn't feel right and well i wish they had kind of started off so we learned

[00:29:39] more about the witches and you know because even with the little amount of time you've got the sense of actually a loving mother witch 100 percent and 100 percent this all comes from sol thinking

[00:29:53] that the the witches having this access to the power is a threat to the jedi power they're not under the control of the jedi jedi are supposed to be the guardians of the galaxy let's say for one

[00:30:04] of another series but uh but that's that's where it all stems from on his side torbin getting frustrated as i went into the jedi order to learn how to be a jedi and here i am taking

[00:30:15] scientific samples from a planner for five and a half months can we just go home yeah i kind of get it he's you know that's that's a little bit anacond skywalker the whiny

[00:30:22] padawan so i kind of get that from him but i just really quickly i know i'm going to go over to you chris about about this but i just want to quickly say there's the scene where we see

[00:30:30] older torbin 13 16 years later 15 years later uh where he's been meditating for years and growing the beard and i was like that beard looks weird that beard looks so weird and we haven't seen him

[00:30:41] as the young padawan up until that time and then i realized oh this is baby faced uh deed charles Chapman who we saw in game of thrones um throwing himself out a window he did not grow that beard somebody stuck some cotton wool in his face

[00:30:55] he does not look any older than 22 or 23 so uh i just that took me out of his scene in the older the older age age but anyway sorry for interrupting your chance sorry you had more

[00:31:06] to say about the central mystery no so it was just like i enjoyed the central mystery but narratively some of the um sort of reasons for the actions that happen not of it really connected

[00:31:22] with me i and and so i kind of just lost it like i think having a focus on osha and may with that coven for part of this you know um and even if it was flitting between

[00:31:38] there and coruscant to build the story and that's the thing i felt like it was in the end the central mystery was to say you know maybe the jai aren't as good as we all

[00:31:52] think they are fine but also then just to almost have the yoda moment and you know the doth uh plagious moment so and it kind of got lost but i mean luckily episode five rescued it for me yeah

[00:32:11] and the motivations were good all of this at the reveal of may being alive not having died and but i was at the end of the first episode as well i'll tell you the one thing that broke it for me

[00:32:26] that really annoyed me in the series about how the story was told effectively in episode two we guess saw telling may the story of what happened when he was able to take her from her family

[00:32:38] and it's all a lie that's what we find at the end of the series it's all a cover-up he's been covering it up not telling may the story but they did the flashback episode where

[00:32:46] we see may and osha with her with their family the the witches on brandoc and that is the story that sol has just told in the previous episode and it was an entire episode of another lie telling us

[00:32:59] just showing us on screen what sol had told us so it felt like a waste of an episode and that absolutely should have been a real central episode to the series you get to know these kids and

[00:33:09] what their lies were like before the jedi came in took one of them away it would have been a much more interesting series had you put a bit of the doubt in our mind set that seed in our mind

[00:33:19] in episode three that maybe sol's not telling the truth but it was just the tale he told in the previous episode and you have to wait another week for a bit more of the story that by that

[00:33:28] stage you were going well this seems a bit odd and mazed out there killing jedi episode one she kills one episode two she kills another episode three episode four she'll kill the fourth

[00:33:38] and then what we got left of the series so yeah more jedi deaths than order six to six here like it was proper blood bath although jedi yes before before any other star wars violence go on we know

[00:33:51] there was about 50 000 jedi that died during order six but there was a lot of onscreen death and I mean I have to say I did I liked that sort of unflinching sort of they're not immortal yeah

[00:34:02] yeah yeah I thought that was really good absolutely why about yourself Chris what about your thoughts on the central mystery and the reveal for me thematically this should have been something I absolutely loved yeah thematically the storyline here is the jedi are we the bad

[00:34:17] guys yeah basically it was like the jedi it's trying to flip it the witches should have been the good guys yeah because open till unless you basically play jedi so for any of the jedi games

[00:34:33] usually the witches are kind of more leaning towards the bad like in a soka they're aligned with the empire in a lot of the other shows typically they are more aligned towards the

[00:34:46] bad guys so here essentially we are seeing the witches being the good guys and the jedi it is revealed to be the bad typically we would also see then maybe there's a singular jedi

[00:35:00] character who learns this big reveal and goes no and then brings it to the council and tries to resolve it it didn't earn any of this what we see is the jedi still being bad guys the

[00:35:14] witches are killed off and then unsurprisingly the ending of the central mislead as it resolved is you know we're just gonna wipe the memory and it's going to continue on and for me when you're

[00:35:31] trying to build this central week-to-week mystery they didn't drip feed enough yes so that was my problem I as a whole it was kind of cool like the singular one being split into two but I

[00:35:50] kind of guess parts of that already I was kind of actually guessing that it was like more the one force good one force bad but actually it was that one force split into two and both can be good or bad

[00:36:03] depending on the thing so that was again cool yeah it's a little bit more nature versus nurture like yeah you know again we I mentioned that word in Star Wars universe they're called a dyad

[00:36:15] something that is formed and one's good ones bad when the two come together they form a whole kind of thing that's that's the dyad this isn't a dyad the both of them are born both of them were

[00:36:23] created from one they are exactly the same and it's turned to the dark side and one maybe might be turned to the light but the thing is as well you start out the series thinking one's in the

[00:36:34] light and the other ones the dark side they've yeah they've turned because of the the events or all like you know or just the possession of things so yeah I mean you know it I like

[00:36:46] that nature nurture thing it's not like oh you know I look evil therefore I'm going to be a Sith exactly just you know there are all these external factors like ultimately with the creation of Anakin

[00:37:00] you know and Darth Vader so like it's really consistent it's really good really enjoying it but it just as I say because it's aimed at this reveal like you say it just feels like wasted

[00:37:14] episode so I mean even you know for me seeing the stranger a Khmer he was one of the best bits of of this because really mysterious you know the the the the sort of the shadowy figure the the the

[00:37:32] the hand you know moving the chess pieces in terms of May here at this notion of almost like a proto-sith you know again loads of different things to his and possible origins like this huge

[00:37:49] scar on his back and certainly linked with Venestra as being you know Venestra's padawan that's right but nothing really concrete comes from it and you can see him kind of being like the best bits

[00:38:03] where he's on his the the planet where he's with Osha and he realizes he's not got May and just almost the manipulation with which tries to bring her round and but I just felt like there

[00:38:22] was so much more that you needed to understand about this yeah this person the the stranger and Darth Plageus was there so that means you know there's now suddenly three there's more than two

[00:38:35] and normally the Sith are in Perse and then they will kill their master in order to then become the master and take on an apprentice so is this you know what's going on is effectively this

[00:38:50] threesome or is this a twosome with and Khmer and Osha and he doesn't know that is he just discovering it there at the end of the episode like it's really hard to keep talking

[00:39:06] about Darth Plageus because he is literally in there for three seconds I missed him on first watch because he's in the darkness and shadows and I was watching on my phone it was only when

[00:39:14] I saw the internet going oh wow he's there in the background that's Darth Plageus yeah just for those of you that don't know and a lot of us don't know from from Star Wars

[00:39:23] to be fair I had to find out off the internet yeah well who this yellow eyed guy I was like oh he's a Sith what does this mean yeah because I they don't it's just a guy in the background

[00:39:34] exactly and he's always been a guy in the background he's never been seen before in live action he has had a novel I think in the extended universe which no longer exists but

[00:39:43] he has had a novel and he was mentioned in one light of dialogue by Palpatine by Emperor Palpatine when trying to turn Anakin that he's the one that discovered how to create life from death

[00:39:54] that is the only real line in all the series and the other thing we know about him is that Palpatine was his padawan and he killed him so so what it does throw up but it stopped me here if I'm

[00:40:05] going way too crazy on the theories of what might happen in the future but what it does throw up is is Kameer a really young version of Emperor Palpatine and he actually you know

[00:40:14] somehow Palpatine returned that whole thing in the end maybe Palpatine is here right in front of us looking like Kameer and then he turns himself into looking a bit more like the senator of

[00:40:24] Naboo of the future yeah you never know that's how he hides himself out in 100 years time you never know and I mean so maybe that explains how he could possibly have had a child as everybody

[00:40:35] was saying about Emperor Palpatine and we find out that he's had children you go how did he ever have sex well he looked like Kameer when he was younger yeah well exactly yeah like I

[00:40:44] mean as I say I think just for me I wanted the immersiveness in their stories and the old republic I don't I what yes the central mystery is good but in a sense it played too much of a first fiddle

[00:41:03] to actually understanding some of the motivations and so on of these characters because most of them a died and secondly yeah and you know who's to say the given plasjust is kind of looking

[00:41:18] fairly creepily from the shadows that Kameer is not going to die very quickly in a second season if they get one so there's a whole sense of stuff being lost here and I felt you know

[00:41:32] it's a merciless in the old republic with you know a good story which I think the central mystery is but structurally to me it's just doesn't work yeah yeah I look for me I'm just gonna because I know

[00:41:52] we do want to go into other saver points I coming into the show I expected and or in the old republic okay right I was expecting a more mature piece about the acrylic because they said this was

[00:42:08] about the dark side acolytes that and I was like oh cool you're gonna give us yeah like a gritty dark side kind of student master piece almost like lone wolf kind of and like a more say a Japanese

[00:42:25] style like lone wolf and cup but more about a dark padwan and or padwan being turned to darkness that like become an acrylic I was like this is going to be gritty and real and I feel unfortunately

[00:42:37] they missed that step they they they had the options there to really go into some of the dark side of the star wars universe who could have gone more into tell us about the witches

[00:42:51] show how the Jedi were not always the good guys back when they became and did some of the dark things that they did which we know about they did like they did take young force sense of children

[00:43:04] to train them as padwan we know the Jedi weren't always they were good guys but sometimes they were corrupt policemen or hid things yeah I think you could have gone more into that and I feel

[00:43:16] they just they started to trickle and then just pulled back a bit too much in thematically I think that's where we miss these beat-to-beats were yeah and they rehashed things we were like

[00:43:27] no we got that in the first sense you didn't need to show us again exactly exactly you didn't need to have your major character telling a story and which was a lie and then showing that story

[00:43:35] on screen in third episode as I said that that was my real downfall and I wasn't sure after episode three whether it would come back for me it did in episode five but

[00:43:43] episode five and episode six are where we lose lots of named Jedi yeah you know it's a great way to set up Kameer the stranger it's a great way to set him up as being massively powerful as he hunts

[00:43:56] them all down in the forest but you know you have you have an actress like Daphne Keane who's who was in Logan and was in the golden compass series you know a very well-known actress

[00:44:06] who's been talking about her role in the show for ages and then she's just slaughtered you know she has a big moment in that episode absolutely but had these been characters that you'd watched a season

[00:44:16] of in the old republic of star wars getting to know them all and then this happens and brings out a Sith where he kills all these characters that you're really attached to you know that would

[00:44:27] be a big thing but I felt like they hadn't done enough of the attachment part of that I know that's what I mean sometimes I just feel that the way a lot of shows go is like

[00:44:38] we have to keep everything hidden yeah and the big reveal is something really actually in the end not that big yeah and I wonder and I wonder were they trying to avoid some of the more

[00:44:49] controversial sides of things you know the big the easy the easiest allegory here is that the Jedi Order had become organized religion at the time and groups like the witches are the first

[00:45:01] peoples or the first nations that were overrun by this massive organization that goes if you don't believe in our religion then you're wrong and you have to die effectively so that's that's where they could have gone and never really got there but it was there implicitly

[00:45:16] in it yeah absolutely yeah it's there but maybe if they'd lean into that a bit more it would have made it a bit more punchy or maybe a bit more interesting I guess for the early part of

[00:45:24] the series so just one very quick one and again this has not been explained it is you they never even touch on it but it's right in front of your eyes the wookie master he is taken over by the

[00:45:35] witches we find that out in the reveal right and then his feet skip forward to when he has died and he is living alone on this planet he is drawing the same markings that is from the

[00:45:50] witches he draws and does all their symbols he has left the Jedi Order he's gone into exile they never even talk about it no he exiled himself and then started to focus on the witches religion

[00:46:03] yeah and it's a really interesting kind of point it is yeah then he gets killed by the stranger yeah never gets talked about never he doesn't don't even get to hear from him like

[00:46:14] and they focus on him drawing the symbol on May's head like that is what he's done but again like that's never even and I feel that's why I feel sometimes I feel they might have dropped

[00:46:28] some things yeah I feel it might have edited out and it may be suffering from that because if they were to talk about that and show like the wookie being like living and kind of I don't

[00:46:44] know telling us why he left and why he feels so bad why he's gone into that over season and then kill him off yeah that's where you earn that payment exactly I feel they

[00:46:55] skipped show end and then told but it's yeah it's something that nobody else is going to investigate that character again we're never going to see someone ask the question about why was can I cause so taken with that religion why did he turn away from the Jedi Order

[00:47:09] that this was the season to show that this was the season to discuss that it was very cool that I have Junas so much so a time we'll back playing Kalnaka who played Chewbacca in the later

[00:47:18] yeah movies after Peter Mayer who passed away it's kind of cool to have him back in in the wookie exercise absolutely I fight yeah with like a lightsaber yeah that was cool yeah and

[00:47:28] I think the other thing to say is you know a mandala Stenberg who plays May and Osha yeah like she really does get the distinction between the two it's really good you know I'm doing that for

[00:47:41] the whole season yeah I love when they're doing the Cup game a couple of times as an audience member whether you know whether putting May in one outfit that she looks like Osha even then you can tell

[00:47:52] the difference between the two yeah I thought it was really well done and I thought that was great yeah could we talk about her as we go on to the second point about where she ends up because

[00:48:03] I think distinctively what they've done to that character and the ending like as an actress was fantastic yeah absolutely yes well cyber point two is all about the ending let's move on there

[00:48:26] so yes the final choices as we as we get the reveal of the central mystery which has been going around quite a lot throughout the season and we've talked about a lot the final choices

[00:48:34] that were made at the end of the season um the big moment I guess is when Osha finally hears the truth revealed from from Sol that she goes sith she goes bad and kills Sol and then

[00:48:49] bleeds into her kyber crystal turning it to red that's massive and again something that we've we've seen before myself a grist definitely as gamers have seen that in the the Jedi video games as blood drives the kyber crystal to turn it to red it's very cool

[00:49:07] in video game very cool to see this for the first time and in live action and seeing it from a character that you've followed along in the story as being your good guy your sensual hero in the show

[00:49:18] whether you know as you learn that Sol's actually not the hero you think he is um you're still on the side of Osha that she's the hero of the show and seeing her bleed into the

[00:49:26] kyber crystal to turn it red you there's lots of great moments there with that I think yeah and it's an awesome moment it's really really good yeah it's cool loved it and again we're talking

[00:49:37] about the arc that was in the Skywalker saga of Anakin Skywalker becoming sith and becoming Darth Vader you know a lot of people myself included not sure whether that stuck the

[00:49:49] landing of why he would go so bad in revenge of the sith here with Osha you're going oh I actually understand here why she is so angry at Sol the person that you trusted most from the

[00:50:00] Jedi order why she's so angry at him and feeds into the dark side I guess and he even kicked her from the order like she left but he it reveals in the final episode that he pushed her to go

[00:50:12] because she would have been too old to even become a Jedi because she was they knew even taking her in that she was too old to come up at right to be taken as a young

[00:50:24] and I look the bleed for me to turning her to the sith turning her to the dark side I feel was fantastic like what felt less earned was making me flipping her back to being essentially Osha because they just wipe her memory of everything

[00:50:49] and now she in if we get season two which I think might be likely I think it's like yeah Osha is now the good maze now the good Osha's now the bad they basically flipped to a degree

[00:51:03] because they just basically made made the blank slate to who doesn't know she has a doesn't have many memories she doesn't know really what happened she has some memories of the death and things like that didn't know she had a sister anymore well for an extra reveal that

[00:51:22] to her so I think it's more exactly Osha's made her choice she's going off to train with Kamiir she's going off to train in the ways of the sith the alternate version that said in the Jedi I'm

[00:51:31] not too sure whether Seth has even been said in the show but Mae is wiped and left with the Jedi at the end at this end point of the of the show but I'm not too sure it's as definitive

[00:51:43] as it seemed to be at the start of the season that maze on the good side and Osha's on the bad because we know all the other stuff about what's going on with the Jedi and so

[00:51:52] that gets a great way to finish off the season and I hope there's more of that story to come in the future hope or hope we are going to see us a second season and I think it's

[00:52:01] it's reasonably likely uh San Diego Comic-Con's coming up just as we're about to finish off the show and then Star Wars Celebration coming up in a couple of weeks time so they are much slower Disney to announce shows as they than they were in the past so

[00:52:14] so it's very likely if they were as an was an announcement you hold that off for San Diego Comic-Con or for Celebration if it's only a couple of weeks away from the end of the series

[00:52:21] right exactly yeah I did think they were going to meld I thought because it was the convergence and they their whole thing is from two to one and one to two I did think there was going to be

[00:52:33] this when they were hugging something was going to happen under the tree where I was like oh will the fours come and like make them one squeeze them back together yeah I think going to be

[00:52:45] like they are the epitome of the gray Jedi they're good and bad and both of them can be good and bad at the same time something like that I think maybe that's a future maybe like they'll split

[00:52:57] them and her light saber will be blue and red like half and half kind of thing I mean even I think just the fact that you know May got the symbol on her forehead you know because she went through

[00:53:08] the ceremony and it's like it didn't really matter there was nothing that really seemed to come of that well it was just her declaring her commitment to her mama but it's just with the importance then

[00:53:21] of seeing the Wookie Jedi you know drawing these as well you know that they have do have meanings there is some powerful significance here because the Jedi were trying to prevent the other one from going through this ceremony because the death of me witches can do stuff

[00:53:36] Jedi can't like we know that from the games yeah like this teleportation there's like force tunnels there's definitely things that they do that theoretically maybe a Jedi could if they

[00:53:48] trained but like they just do the witches do stuff Jedi don't yeah so I was expecting part of that but that never really kind of manifested it's just said because we're seeing a lot of them

[00:53:58] perspective of the Jedi it's just said they're very powerful for what they've done but the reason they stopped Osha going through is because if Osha goes through that she's committed herself to another order they can't take her away like all Jedi do with your children and she

[00:54:11] wanted to become a Jedi yeah I mean but I like the fact that Osha goes with to train with Kamiya here like I think Kamiya the stranger I do like the fact that he was known as Smilo-Ren as well

[00:54:23] because of the helmet and the smile absolutely love to smile yeah and I thought that was cool you know because I think he is the coolest character at least for me anyway and in in the show along

[00:54:38] with Sol I really like Sol's character and I do like Mayan Osha as well and but I think Kamiya just shows that real it almost feels like an organic way of becoming the Sith obviously

[00:54:52] something happened which we didn't find out about but it's the fact that he didn't just kill Osha when she when he realized that had been switched you know you got the sense of I mean

[00:55:09] you did get the sense of him trying to mentor her really and that you know it was just this is the alternative way you know so again to that whole religious point these are the kind of

[00:55:21] my cast if you want to come at it from this angle you know these are the the Protestants effectively they're protesting against the this whatever or the Lutherans or the Lutherans yeah I actually I take it bigger than that it's probably Christianity versus Buddhism or something like

[00:55:40] that whatever it is because career comes across as just he's free yeah exactly you know there's the Jedi is about rules and regulations and control and setting up their their form of society Kamiya is introduced in a classic classic way just like Jackie Chan and drunken master basically

[00:56:01] you know you don't suspect who this character is the guy who's drunk asleep when May comes in and wakes him up he's just the sidekick to her and then you see the big reveal that actually

[00:56:12] he is the Jedi master affected the Sith master so he's introduced in this chilled out way he's got his own place he's has a great answer for everything that every question that that Oshah

[00:56:23] has for him and he's living off the land he's totally happy with himself and he's been inside the Jedi order as we find out by the end of the series so he's not just trying to

[00:56:33] darkly manipulate somebody in front of me saying look at the life I chose to have after the Jedi and with May having her mind wiped at the end of the series that is her saying to Oshah

[00:56:44] that the question that she posed Oshah I'm not going to tell you what to do you do what you want to do what is it that you want what's the thing you want to do and what she wants to do is keep

[00:56:53] her safe and go off and explore this side the other side the non-Jedi side so if that way that she gives the choice to May and is willingly willingly accepts having her mind

[00:57:05] wiped I thought it was a really good arc for her story as well yeah and the look the stranger is cool his helmet's cool yeah his outfit's cool his slide ever school the kind of cuts into two

[00:57:21] and smaller version like like a dagger yes or the classic sort of Japanese katana and the dagger yeah exactly and look that looks fantastic and the actor who plays him fantastic yeah from the good

[00:57:36] place like yeah he is the he's the absolute proper bimbo or himbo from from the good place for the first couple of seasons or he's made with a major character in there but just did not

[00:57:47] expect that was him in the show he's really good like the reveal for me was so I want to know more and this is like by the end of this season I want to know more about the acolyte and the

[00:57:57] master yeah like what happens in season two between these two as they journey it down the darkened path I'm genuinely interested in seeing yeah because he is as you guys have said

[00:58:09] he has a mystery background he why is he the way he doesn't he kind of tries to draw her in but then also where his helmet is a shield it is a sensory deprivation so he's just him in the

[00:58:23] force but also stops people sensing him as well and it's so interesting because when osha puts that on like we get that she her power expands and she's able to see the future to a degree as well

[00:58:37] and I'm like oh that kid's so interesting place yeah oh and then the the big thing that everyone has talked about is this is these helmets are obviously quite similar to kyla

[00:58:47] wrens and the knights of wren so apparently part of this as well it falls in down years later is found by the likes of the wren and how they do things oh maybe um which is really interesting

[00:59:02] but overall love the stranger as a character he's so cool yeah so definitely really enjoyed him in the show I'm one of the other major characters in the show master of rinastra one of the only surviving jet I actually know we meet and I think about it and

[00:59:18] a really interesting character because she's kept so far away from the central story she's the one that's back at the Jedi council I guess back on back in curse and she's kept away from everything

[00:59:27] that's going on and she's the one that chooses to create this lie when she finds what's actually happened she's the one that chooses to cover it all up um really to avoid investigation into the Jedi order so maybe there's more of that to come as

[00:59:45] to why she made that decision here um but it seems like hang on a second I have an opportunity here to tie this all up and meet the little package presented to the world like these were just

[00:59:55] this was just one bad Jedi in our order and close it all off here um it's one character that I felt needed a bit more development and one thing that is that I would definitely not have

[01:00:07] gotten from watching the show at all the reason they keep mentioning that she gets space sick is in the the book that she originally appeared in when she traveled through um intergalactic

[01:00:19] space she has visions of the past and the future did you guys get that at all no so so when she arrives on the planet where Sol has just been killed she arrives on the planet she gets an echo

[01:00:31] a force echo effectively of everything of the entire tale laid out in front of her so that's why she knows everything that's happening but that's why they keep mentioning this space sickness that she gets oh did you actually go in a spaceship oh how are you feeling is

[01:00:46] have you still got a headache they mentioned it so many times but I wouldn't have gotten from the show at all that this is a this is part of her force powers effectively is that

[01:00:53] she can see the future and the and the past if she travels through hyperspace effectively so and so there's all of that there is why did she make this choice to hide the Jedi from

[01:01:05] scrutiny effectively so and to hide the presence of Kami as well yeah who watches her and he's got the the reason why he's got the deprivation helmet on is one of the reasons for

[01:01:17] that is to block her from having her visions and seeing him so the reason so when he's not wearing the helmet she can sense that he's there so he's and she senses him the minute she gets on

[01:01:26] the planet so a little the echo of Vader and Obi-Wan Kenobi there as well yeah it's definitely it i'm interested to see where that goes because they do set up that mystery and they start setting

[01:01:39] up the senate versus the Jedi which we've seen play out different ways before but again political power versus religious power yeah we're saying government versus police exactly and in 100 years time as we've seen in the prequel trilogy really the Jedi and senate work quite closely together

[01:01:57] until yeah the emperor does really there's a fracture coming and then that fracture is fixed and it's only 100 years as well yeah exactly so it's like how all of these things start to

[01:02:07] pull together i'm really interested yeah and let's talk about she goes to one of her masters Yoda yeah that should have been in shoes earlier well i think but like they should have got like at least rather than just we all know who Yoda is

[01:02:25] we all know what he looks like so just showing the back i think they should have walked in on the council and you show the council and kind of like we have an issue there is a disturbance

[01:02:37] in the balance they need to set up a bit more there and maybe they have just haven't wrote it yet maybe that could be the issue they don't know where they're going but for me that's

[01:02:47] they've set up this character like oh she's connected to him she she's blocking this why not tease where that's going because at the moment it's resolved that's the problem yeah but i

[01:03:02] think there's a very good reason why you do that because you don't want to have a show that steps all over at the legacy of Yoda you don't want to have a show where Yoda's

[01:03:09] complicit in hiding this information about the Jedi so you want this character that you don't really know that well master finaster you want her to be the one that covers up the whole idea that

[01:03:19] sith could be back in the universe or back in the galaxy you want to cover all that up so nobody knows about at the end of the series it's all wiped clean and now she's going to Yoda

[01:03:28] i think that actual conversation if you'd had another couple lines all it would be is the senator starting to suspect there's something wrong with the Jedi order and want to investigate it how do i deal with this master Yoda i think that's the actual conversation

[01:03:39] but if you bring Yoda in earlier on and he's complicit in what she's doing here you've got a big change to your Yoda character right yeah oh that's true yeah that that literally

[01:03:50] could be why they did it um but for me the conclusions of this and the way they set up all the characters i'm interested to see season two yeah that's the big part from the

[01:04:04] big nailing solution is they've done the right thing in terms of this the the scene setting for the end exactly exactly and that one thing i do want to move us on to saver point number three

[01:04:17] yes let's move on to our third and final saver point for this episode yes the final saver point is really just about the actors the characters the setting overall and you know the battles we've talked a bit about about some of them there but

[01:04:38] as we went through here we've talked about some of the some of the major actors and some really classic performance some really good performances in here john you mentioned earlier on about about soul master soul uh carrying the series really li jong j

[01:04:52] carrying the series um he was such a good actor in squid game um where he is from korea originally that's that it was all delivered in korean and apparently got the role because of

[01:05:04] his time in squid game and learned english for the show um he's not a native english speaker wow that's amazing he learned as as filming started he had only learned his lines in english for the

[01:05:16] for the first episode and for the first part of filming let's say and by the end of the series he was he was able to deliver all of his lines but that's how good he was in squid game he

[01:05:25] could get across the emotion of that character going through everything that he was going through and now he's playing a jedi a conflicted jedi throughout the series and holding the show that's

[01:05:33] that fascination to me that he was able to do that yeah no i mean i thought he was excellent and i think the three main principal characters you know li jong j amandla stenberg and and mania jisinto i thought these three actors were absolutely

[01:05:54] superb and i and that's why i really also want to see a season two i think they're really good um you know i as i say i think with dean charles chapman and his torbin i think it was just the

[01:06:07] character yeah it wasn't anything wrong with the performance per se but it it just felt strange and again it was just like there you go you know and and i i i guess as well it's

[01:06:21] maybe just sometimes the format you know if you had a two and a half hour three hour movie this may have been a really different proposition i had totally agree and i was even thinking about

[01:06:34] this today with with them being released episodically i love weekly shows you guys know that i've mentioned that all the time with it being weekly shows people were dropping off after a few episodes because it wasn't delivering a universe they felt they were connected to that's the

[01:06:47] that's what i certainly got from uh from some of the criticism by star wars fans not the ones that you know rated it one without watching an episode the ones that stuck with it for a few episodes

[01:06:57] you know but if you were going to the cinema to watch a star wars movie you absolutely would watch all two and a half hours of that movie and then make up your mind at the end of it when

[01:07:04] you walk out of the cinema what you thought of it you wouldn't walk out after 15 minutes and go not for me nobody does that with star wars movies right so so it's a different idea and

[01:07:14] that's why i think the format of the show would have worked really well if you were doing telling a star wars story a mystery like this where people have to say it and watch to the end

[01:07:24] but nobody is up around the obligation to sit down and watch an eight episode series if they choose that that's not for them because not revealing as it doesn't feel like the universe but the actors were doing such a great job i thought kary amos was really good

[01:07:35] in her background role yeah when you thought she was going to be uh what she thought she was going to be a major character but in her background role she delivered her guidance so well

[01:07:44] and felt like part of the universe really really good uh in that role as well but yeah some good stuff anybody else that's today to you anything else you'd say to um the battles i think like

[01:07:53] you said i mean i think certainly uh kamee versus the the jedi in the forest absolutely no jedi is falling like flies here um i was like everybody got a moment out of it as well

[01:08:07] yeah and i really enjoyed it because um you know that's the thing in a sense that's what i liked about this character so ruthless in battle yet seemingly and maybe that's just being drawn in by

[01:08:23] the sith and maybe that's the point and maybe that'd be something that you get from a season two but then just you know you would say silver tongues um in a in a sense yeah but

[01:08:36] but you get from this because you have that preconception around sith or proto sith or whatever but you're seeing it play out with the jedi that they are equally as silver tongued yes

[01:08:50] and i really like that moment um on the sisters fight i found it weird that karyan mos's character somehow killed literally the entire coven from some trance that they were doing um i really didn't understand that it's like is it like unplugging the internet it fell yeah

[01:09:10] exactly do you know what it was it was unplugging them from the matrix while they're still connecting remember like yeah pulling them out whether it was exactly that like they were in some trance

[01:09:20] i i feel like they were all pulling pushing their power through the central system when she died they all died that's that's what i feel happens actually on soul on soul's head that they died no but

[01:09:31] i thought it was coming from karyan mos i thought she kind of like did something with her like flipped her head and then next thing they're all dead i think the main thing was sol is that he kills

[01:09:42] osha's mother yeah yeah that's the the main thing yeah and they're sorry they're all in a chance to get that your right and i just felt that was weird yeah um i didn't kind of understand why

[01:09:55] or what was happening it's effectively genocide that sounds really bad but that's effectively well that's what i mean and actually so i really enjoyed the galaxy of the higher republic you know that setting really good i'm just wondering is it you know and it's playing

[01:10:15] with preconceived notions exactly what you think around the sith and the jedi yeah but you want that also to be mentioned and you don't really get a sense on it and even if it was like

[01:10:30] so yes yoda you don't want him to be complicit but even if you had him in the council going you know i sense that we are sort of straying from the path of what the jedi is is we've

[01:10:42] become too corrupted ourselves by power and that can only lead to the docks or whatever absolutely but that's what he does in planta melis 100 years later that's effectively where he is he's realizing that the jedi may have strayed far from the path like that's that is the realization

[01:10:58] he comes to you you're absolutely right um but i do think you're right one of the things that is very different about this story is you're starting out with four jedi going off doing scientific experiments on a planet um they discovered this this group of people that are

[01:11:12] there and by the end of the series what you realize is they've exterminated the mole taken one of their children left them all for dead covered it all up which justifies the murders of the four jedi you realize they are the bad guys each one of them

[01:11:27] played their part and that's the other bit that i think is important to talk about because it felt almost like i don't know it felt like a slasher movie it felt like freddy kruger or it felt like

[01:11:38] jason you know we have each one of the jedi masters being murdered for their part in this plot that ended off with the death of may's mother um and then finally osha finding out about

[01:11:50] that plot and killing the last member of the group so it felt like that was taking inspiration let's say from slasher movies which i loved i'd hope that idea i think that's really good and you

[01:12:00] and by the end of it i didn't feel bad for the fact that those jedi's were being killed for their part in what they did um which is when you go in with the preconceived notion that all

[01:12:10] jedi are the good guys in the galaxy and all the other species the sith the witches are all bad guys in the galaxy that's a good turn to accomplish by the end of the series so yeah

[01:12:22] so i thought that was good cool and then the last one i just want to mention a bit the battles in in the show just because we only finished doing the boys and we had a scene where we had

[01:12:31] we had annie january fighting herself uh in the final episode we also have the sisters fighting against each other so another scene where uh where we have uh one actress flashing herself yeah excellent stuff the battles were really on point actually yeah yeah my last my last two

[01:12:49] cents on this is the the high republic the old republic i want to see more of that like john said i want to see more like there is the guardian jedi the counselor jedi the the different

[01:13:01] orders of the order of the jedi like they do different roles and so like they're like then there's the knights who are the more like the the military arm like that is the interesting part

[01:13:11] of when they were at their highest the high republic they all do these different things so a scientific study makes sense when they are these particular order within it so seeing and they

[01:13:22] all had different light saber colors and different so seeing that in and by the way there were also very cool droids back then and different style of ships which we saw so all of these things is why

[01:13:35] i'm bought into that year to see more of that because that stuff that's either only been written about in the books and you're like so you're imagining a lot of it yourself or you've seen

[01:13:48] some of it in comic books or the video games so seeing these how these come out in future seasons will be super interesting i think that's a really good point chris it's kind of a let's

[01:13:58] let's just go into final thoughts on the acolytes as a season just just to kind of wrap up our overall thoughts and one of the things that just leads into leads into my final thoughts chris

[01:14:09] i'd love if they were able to have established the old republic with this first show set in the old republic yeah because in fairness not very many star wars fans have actually read

[01:14:19] any of the old republic books a very small portion of them have played the video games especially as we talked about at the beginning the old republic games are over 20 years old now as well and hard to get so very few people know much about the old republic

[01:14:32] so if you're going to establish the world in the old republic i think the acolyte was not the show to do that i think if you did the acolyte set it in the modern era in amongst the in amongst

[01:14:44] all the stuff we know about in the familiar part of star wars it actually probably would have worked better for most people because people wouldn't have been expecting as much

[01:14:51] out of it or would have expected that it would tie in a little bit more with the universe that we know whereas setting it so far back and it being the first time that most viewers will have

[01:14:59] seen the old republic you're expecting more from it you're expecting to have exactly as you said chris what's the setup of the jedi order right now i didn't see that at all what's what's the

[01:15:08] setup of the universe what's carousel actually like you want to know all that stuff and i think if you'd start it out building that universe with a different show and then set acolyte there

[01:15:18] probably would have worked a lot better for me but this being the first show i'm worried that people haven't got the taste of that universe and aren't going to be coming back for all the

[01:15:25] ancillary interesting stories that can be told in that galaxy yeah um wasn't as exciting a start to that universe as a new hope was or star wars episode four was yeah john overall what do you

[01:15:36] think of uh of the acolyte season one yeah i mean do you know i would give this uh three and a half sultry sexy siths out of um five and by god i would want five of those uh sultry sexy shirtless

[01:15:53] sits and shirtless as well yeah absolutely um and i mean you know there's a lot i liked about this there's also a lot that i just i don't understand the choices i almost feel this would have been

[01:16:08] better off to have been in a as a cinematic movie to really get that epic and the scope of it i thought there's some really good stuff in here that i really enjoyed the the witches the three

[01:16:22] central characters absolutely fantastic the central premise of it really i think the issues came around um just the ordering of some of the episodes the two flashbacks and some of the choices made

[01:16:39] around the rationale for their actions in particular torbine um and but he's like anakin he's annoying in a teenager no i know but you've not got enough time with him yeah you know like let's

[01:16:52] live without it but anyway i know what you mean i take your point you know and sand it had some it really you know it played with your preconceptions around the good and evil of jedi and sith it played

[01:17:03] with those preconceived notions but i don't know there's just something as i say the first four episodes i was really just kind of going i just don't know what's there is to care about here

[01:17:16] and even on the final episode i had to watch the ending of it twice because i was like so what's happened here exactly yeah like what yeah this feels like something great when it's written down

[01:17:30] on your sketch on your writing pad to write towards if you're a writer but it feels like if you'd seeded that a bit more throughout the series so we understand that when it gets to the

[01:17:39] final episode it helps us all a lot i think to the point the upending of different preconceived notions that the the you know the the shear points or just the the reversal of fortune you know that that that's switching things up really really good absolutely loved that

[01:17:59] and but i think you know it didn't necessarily needed to have been played as a bang here's the big twist exactly yeah and i think it could have just twisted itself along quite nicely well yeah and quite explicitly yeah through the episodes but but as christ i

[01:18:19] think you said as well christ you know having those cliffhangers at the end of each episode to go oh something's not what it seems here you know to take you along with the mystery because that's

[01:18:28] what mystery shows do they give you something to hang on to at the end of each episode that will allow you to get on to the next one totally agreed but what i mean is so even just bringing

[01:18:38] a play just sort of spindly hand out in episode two rather than the final episode can you imagine if they did that lepso to that didn't show them the other six your minds would just blow up i think my point is that they should have yeah they absolutely

[01:18:54] should have shown his reasoning for being there on the screen with his spindly hand in and effectively but they won't show that until the end of season two that'll be his two seconds at

[01:19:06] the end of season otherwise you never get to it yeah yeah agreed but chris what did you think overall of the acolyte season one i'm kind of somewhere a bit less than both of you

[01:19:16] i'm okay too good on this so like i do a 2.5 to 3 out of 5 i went in with a lot more preconceptions of what this would be based on some of the comics and some of the games and what the options of this

[01:19:30] and again as i said i thought this was going to be more andor then say say more asoka which is again and i'd like to soca and this was good too okay okay too good i should actually kind of brand

[01:19:43] that um i feel a lot of the points were there and as a whole when you get to the end it's good but they just miss some story beats or maybe there's some weird edits or and this is what we

[01:19:57] do we talk about a lot of these shows so i don't think i'm like an expert but i'm i definitely understand how the threads of eight episodes series should kind of kind of be written and

[01:20:09] kind of pointed in package i feel it missed some of those marks agreed totally chris and if and if you're going to change that format no problem at all change that format that's deadly

[01:20:18] but make sure it works exactly even if you're trying to throw everything up in the air like they are at this show if you're gonna throw everything up in the air to make a different

[01:20:26] show than people expect excellent but make sure it bloody works in the way you exactly decide to create it absolutely i think i just i think that it missed the mark on some of

[01:20:34] these yeah i'm very much interested in season two that's the thing i will end my final point is my kind of wrap up is i want to see season two now i want to see they've set up something

[01:20:46] that's going to be good going and for any gamers this is assassin creed to assassin screen this is this is a new hope to empire strikes by maybe it's something good that has the possibility

[01:21:01] to be absolutely great in the next installment and i think if they lean into the things that worked and kind of phase out some of the things that didn't i think we're in for quite a good

[01:21:13] thing in about two or three years probably have two years but again we'll find out in a couple of days s sandiae and come on is in a couple of days and then d-23 is in a couple of weeks

[01:21:23] we'll get some form of announcement be it good or bad and we'll see but now the unfortunate thing is the next installment is going to be the skeleton crew and that takes us

[01:21:33] right back to the skywalker saga here so we're going to be jumping out of the higher public for at least a while yeah yeah so we'll see yeah yeah excellent stuff thanks so much for

[01:21:46] joining us for our podcast about the acolyte i'm going to take it off guys thanks so much for joining me for this one i'm going to take it off with the rest of our fellow acolytes and

[01:21:55] chat about their feedback on the last couple of episodes because i know you both got to go yes thank you so much to everyone for joining us for this beautiful discussion um i can't

[01:22:06] wait to hear what your thoughts were fellow acolytes and we'll speak to you very soon in the galaxy far far away for whatever will be the new star wars podcasts discussions find out when we

[01:22:20] get dates of skeleton crew and or in the future who knows yeah it's a galaxy a long time ago in the galaxy far far away is when we'll know it's absolutely yeah great chatting all things about

[01:22:32] the acolyte fellow acolytes um i love that fellow acolytes um makes sound so important um but yeah thank you so much fellow acolytes for joining us for this season one discussion uh on the acolyte

[01:22:47] yeah okay as i said the guys had to go unfortunately so they didn't have a chance to stay with us to do the feedback but i'm here with our wonderful fellow acolytes with their thoughts on the

[01:22:55] acolyte finale um first up alex bailish says i thought this was a great setup for season two i think since this is so dark in the Jedi portrayed to me as foolish or dumb almost like storm troopers

[01:23:05] with the way they just run in with lightsabers in hand i actually started to dislike them maybe that's what they were going for since this is focused on the sith master van estra was not my

[01:23:15] favorite character but i hope season two will make her more likeable it was so sad that they killed every single person that we started this series with walking dead star i feel since this is not

[01:23:24] a complete show and it being sith focused it's getting a bit of a bad rap that's an interesting point alex yeah um like you heard our thoughts there on on why um i suppose why i feel was it was

[01:23:35] getting a bit of a bad rap as a show um but there are ways that i suppose it could have gone uh that wouldn't have got to have a bad rap i don't think it's specifically because it's sith focused um but

[01:23:46] yeah it just felt weird that there were so many named characters just were were killed off in in one episode um definitely but yeah let's hope there is a season two coming up that allows

[01:23:56] to explore the characters that aren't still alive a bit more thanks very much for that alex um we also got some feedback in from dr bob philips who said not quite how expected the show to turn out and

[01:24:05] that's not a bad thing with two twists that possibly seal this as a capsule story letting us stay questioning the premise of the jedi sith binary or allowing for a season two the performance

[01:24:15] of sol tortured by a single terrible misjudgment was brilliant as was the jewel may osha work and sexy sith wasn't bad either totally witchy there above adabrutan said they couldn't really

[01:24:28] help themselves that last shot sigh uh yeah i guess that's uh that's the appearance of yoda right at the end joe herber says cool lightsaber fights but unfortunately another disappointing star wars season for me my wife doesn't usually get too agitated by shows but this finale bugged her

[01:24:43] and when it ended her summary was that just made no sense i thought osha's story was poorly done she went from not being able to use the force to save her own life early in the season to

[01:24:52] putting on the toothy helmet and bam dart sexy can hardly get near her what happened there she went from not letting her old pal sol kill a rampaging murderer a few episodes ago to suddenly force

[01:25:02] choking sol to death after barely hearing what happened they clearly wanted to show how she turned to the dark side but it was not well executed for me mazark wasn't much better either

[01:25:11] she ends up only remembering when she was eight two full episodes of flashbacks and they still didn't explain to what happened to me how did she survive why didn't the jedi apparently not try to

[01:25:21] retrieve her body how when did she meet camere why did sol make such terrible decisions back then the show didn't seem to know what it really wanted to be it was dark and violent and then it's got

[01:25:31] reset pip shooting oil and osha in the finale like a kid's show a whole group of jedi are following a little sniffling creature around like they're useless without it it has incredible fight scenes then the middle of the final finale we're on curisant introducing a senator

[01:25:44] i can't wait for and or to return maybe the next season of mandol be good here's hoping yeah seems like very very disappointed there joe i think there are really good things about

[01:25:53] the show but yeah there's there's a couple of a couple of things that didn't really match up to what i hope to see in a star wars season definitely like some battles were very cool

[01:26:04] but i think like there i think you know as i say on rewatch and watching it through for the second time all in a row i think it matches up a lot more closely than i thought

[01:26:13] it did the first time i watched it when i was watching it week to week and and leaving the full gap of a week between the episodes so so maybe there's a bit more maybe we may have

[01:26:22] highlighted some of the things that came out of the show that may not have been highlighted as well when you watched the first time maybe that might help joe but thanks very much for your feedback

[01:26:30] kaffe in vodka sent in a message to us he says checkoffs forced dyad ended up broken and on fired the show's premise if any lost in a blind alley the one lesson learned

[01:26:41] never bring the homesick prone or those with a pattern on festers on a way mission cool jewels and fight scenes with excellent acting in an aimless tale to sundered sabers twisted sisters and treacherous trackers out of five oh yeah i think that's probably the lowest rating that you've

[01:26:58] given to any of the shows that we've covered kaffe vodka yeah um i know it wasn't really clicking for you as well during the season and i'm i'm the same it's it's definitely not up

[01:27:06] there with uh with the best of star wars shows and as i say my big question in my head and something that will never really know is i wonder if they've done a more straightforward show in the

[01:27:14] old republic with this have stood out as a better show once we had an established universe around it as it was focusing on all the characters late knowing the established universe around it at

[01:27:25] this time in the in the old republic um maybe that didn't do it any favors at all finally alan thomas says i really quite like the finale definitely better than some earlier episodes

[01:27:35] but not as good as episode six of the show for virgin says out of five very good on yeah as i said i think the end worked really well for me and by the end of the series season as we got there i

[01:27:44] think it overall worked really well so i'm glad you enjoyed it thanks everybody for your feedback i know there was some other feedback that came in on each individual episode over on the facebook

[01:27:53] group as well if you want to go check that out pop up to our facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash tv podcast industries or if you want to send in any thoughts that you have

[01:28:01] on the acolyte you can always email us to feedback at tv podcast industries calm and you can have a chat with me about thanks so much for joining us we will be back next week with our coverage of

[01:28:11] deadpool and wolverine go back to the cinema to watch marvels deadpool and wolverine looking forward to that and we have just recorded and released the boys wrap up if you've watched season four of the boys and we have every episode covered on tv podcast industries calm as well

[01:28:24] so make sure you subscribe to the podcast over there and tv podcast industries calm to get access to all the shows that we'll be covering in the future but i will return to john and chris

[01:28:32] one last time um for them to say a farewell as well thanks so much for joining us yes thank you so much for joining us schnick schnick yes thanks so much fellow acolytes for joining us for this

[01:28:43] season one discussion really great to have this chat with uh with yourselves until the next season of acolyte remember keep watching keep listening and of course don't bleed any kyber crystals bye bye