Star Wars: The Acolyte shows promise, but would be better as a film

★★★★ | Streaming on Disney Plus starting June 5th

After four episodes with The Acolyte, I have the same question I usually have with Disney’s Star Wars content these days: Wouldn’t this have been better as a film?

It has the pacing of a film, and most of the episodes suffer as a result. At times, the only interesting parts are at the beginning and end, leaving the middle sections wading aimlessly. Cut those bits out, and you can notice a structure that feels more or less like a movie.

Set in the time of the high republic, The Acolyte takes place over a hundred years before the Star Wars we’ve known before, yet feels frustratingly familiar. For fans of the prequels, this is a good thing. Most of the series looks, sounds, and moves like Episodes 1-3. Which means there is plenty of stilted dialogue, limp attempts at humor, and an odd pacing that feels like it wants to run, but never picks up its feet. The two-part opening, premiering tomorrow, is particularly egregious about this. Within ten minutes, we witness a shuttle crash landing on a planet, survivors questioned in a completely different part of the galaxy, and a rescue crew finding the ship and its sole survivor. It aims for tense and mysterious, but instead makes the galaxy feel small.

The central mystery involving a potential cover-up, murder, and revenge is inherently intriguing. There’s also a welcome emphasis on the lore established in The Last Jedi. The Jedi order is one of power-hungry individuals, enforcing their hubris and blind faith in the system on an entire galaxy. As far as politics in Star Wars goes, it’s as ACAB as the franchise has ever got.

Granted, it never fully leans into the material, even when it clearly should. By the fourth episode, it’s already backtracking into a far more traditional arc of light and dark, which doesn’t bode well for the rest of the season. But there are elements here that are worth praising, and after Andor, which proved Star Wars could be fascinating on that political level again, any bit of hope is welcome.

At this point, it’s difficult to say what The Acolyte will become. We’re less than halfway through the season, and the episodes (ranging around 30 minutes each) have done little to establish more than the initial mystery at this point. It’s held back by a structure designed to keep viewers glued to a streaming service instead of telling a singular, compelling narrative. I hope the slowness is because of a tightly wound mystery that rewards patience. I hope I am wrong in my hesitations.

I guess that’s what Star Wars has taught me: Hope is good. But blind hope can be just as devastating.