The Acolyte has finally descended upon Disney Plus, and its presence indicates that things are well and truly looking up for the world of Star Wars. Indeed, despite a handful of loose screws and the unescapable concessions that come with the Disney umbrella, The Acolyte is quite confidently forging brand new ground for Star Wars‘ storytelling capabilities, and Tuesdays just got a whole lot more exciting (so long, of course, as you’re capable of seeing people as people; if you know, you know).
The twists and turns we’ve been given in these first two episodes have offered up a wealth of questions, answers, and more questions already, but for those of you who aren’t particularly intimate with Star Wars, one of the bigger questions might be why this show is called The Acolyte.
What is an Acolyte in Star Wars?
To put it simply, an Acolyte is roughly the Sith equivalent of a Padawan; a Force-sensitive trainee of sorts who is learning the ways of either the light path or the dark path under a more experienced Jedi Master or Sith Lord (Padawans train under Jedi, Acolytes train under Sith).
But, this was only the case prior to Darth Bane’s “Rule of Two” reformation of the Sith Order, which decreed that only a master and an apprentice could exist within the Sith Order at any given time, and subsequently doing away with the hierarchy system that included the Acolyte title (although the term was still used colloquially). During this time, former Acolytes were given tests to earn their place as a proper apprentice.
Exactly how these politics might reflect in the story of The Acolyte remains to be seen, and we will in fact see such a thing in due time as The Acolyte continues to roll out episodes on Disney Plus every Tuesday until the season finale on July 16.