Main cast: Amandla Stenberg (Mae Aniseya, Osha Aniseya), Lee Jung-jae (Master Sol), Charlie Barnett (Yord Fandar), Dafne Keen (Jecki Lon), Rebecca Henderson (Vernestra Rwoh), Jodie Turner-Smith (Mother Aniseya), and Carrie-Anne Moss (Master Indara)
Director: Leslye Headland
I hope no one tunes in Lost/Found just for Carrie-Anne Moss, because her Jedi Master character gets assassinated by girlboss Mae Aniseya before one can even clutch at the heart and call for alcohol the moment they realize exactly the kind of excrement that they have dunked their face into.
The Acolyte is the manifestation of Kathleen Kennedy’s constant yammering about how the Force is female, and Leslye Headland, whose past as a PA to Harvey Weinstein will earn one a ban if one dares to mention it on social media these days because Ms Headland is a lesbian and thus can’t be anything less than a paragon of perfection, adds a lot of queer icing on the cake to create a super expensive fan fiction show.
That’s right. this is that kind of show, and already the usual suspects as well as the people behind this show are running around the place screaming that anyone that doesn’t watch this thing is all kinds of -ists and -phobes. Yawn, does that kind of tactic still work?
This show is about twin sisters, Mae and Osha Aniseya. They are both Force-sensitive, naturally, although the definition or meaning of the Force has changed gender, sexuality, mode of transmission, sexual role, skin color, political affiliation, and hair color depending on which diversity hire is doing the turd-boiling.
It also takes place about 100 years before Star Wars: Episode 1—The Phantom Menace, because strong brave diversity hires are incapable of coming up with new lore or concepts by themselves. Their forte is taking a chicken and making it female, gay, and lame, after all.
Anyway, the episode opens with a dramatic battle… except there is no tension, no suspense, just a scrawny girlboss doing some unconvincing arm flailing and then stabbing a Jedi Master to death with a dagger. Because Jedi Master Indara has no plot armors that can let her live even after getting stabbed by a lightsaber, she dies from a dagger wound.
It’s really sad, because there are so many ways Indara could have swatted this gnat, but the script bends over backward just to let the Jedi Master basically let the girlboss kill her. Yes, modern day girlbosses: bratty little girls that play games on super easy mode so that they can win and think they are all that.
Anyway, because Mae the assassin subtly unmasks herself to Indara and everyone else, her poor good twin sister Osha is implicated for the crime, as there is apparently only one black girl with red hair on the entire planet or something.
Oh god, this episode. I wish I can say that it is so bad that it’s at least something one can watch and laugh at while being roaring drunk, but no, it’s horrifyingly boring.
The leading lady spends all her waking hours the last few weeks acting like she’s the first black actor in a Star Wars thing, but if she were to be representing anything here, it’s probably a tree stump. Amandla Stenberg has all the charisma and screen presence as well as emotive ability and line delivery of a block of wood. It’s like they cast her because she is public about being a bisexual and voila, she checks a few boxes in one go and she’s cheap, so she’s hired, because her performance here is like someone that has just came out of a coma three minutes ago.
Meanwhile, the episode just moves from scene to scene with no noticeable change of pacing or mood, making the whole thing feel very amateurish and static. The characters all speak hackneyed stuff that would have easily passed for satirical piss takes on actual Star Wars were not for the fact that these people are all seem super serious and earnest.
The whole episode also looks rather cheap, so I’m not sure where the alleged budget of $20 million plus per episode went to. It’s not like the cast members are the types that command super hefty salaries either. Maybe being queer attention whores is super expensive.
I’m giving this thing two oogies because perhaps it may be too early to tell and things may get better in the next few episodes, but I personally will keep my expectations super low. It’s a Disney+ fare after all, and if one has seen the last few Star Wars turds from these people, this episode is going to be déjà vu.
