It’s well-known that Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader, along with Order 66, nearly destroyed the Jedi entirely in Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith, but Star Wars has since revealed that the Jedi Order faced a massive threat long before that—and it didn’t look anything like that attack.
Of all the events in the Star Wars timeline, Order 66 is perhaps the most defining for the Jedi. After all, this brought an end to the Jedi Order as we knew it (and it still hasn’t really been restored, generations later), and the Jedi very nearly went extinct. Yet, this downfall didn’t happen all at once.
On the contrary, the Jedi Order suffered cracks and fissures for years, slowly stepping away from what the institution had once been and toward the flawed Order that would crumble in the prequels. Set 100 years before that, The Acolyte explored what those earlier flaws looked like and identified the shocking way the Order nearly fell a century before.
A Kid Almost Brought The Jedi Down
The Acolyte centers on a mysterious conflict between a team of Jedi and the Witches of Brendok, several years before the show is set. Initially, all that is known is that this ended with the witches’ deaths. Throughout the show, it is revealed that the conflict began with the Jedi wanting to test twins Osha and Mae in the Force.
When Mae is being tested, Master Indara and Master Sol ask about her facial marking, and she explains that she received it during Ascension, a ceremony in which she swore her loyalty to the coven. Unfortunately, as little kids often do, Mae misspoke in a way that made the situation sound alarming.
Specifically, Mae told the Jedi, “Mama said, ‘Everyone must walk through fear. Everyone must be sacrificed to fulfill their destiny.'” In reality, Mother Aniseya had said, “Ascension is about walking through fear. It is about sacrificing a part of yourself. The power of many, instead of the power of one.”
Ironically, what Mother Aniseya actually said aligns with much of what the Jedi teach in terms of letting go of attachments and fear and acting selflessly. Because of this phrasing, however, the Jedi believed that the witches were going to cause the girls harm, which led to the bloody battle that wiped out the witches.
In turn, this led to Mae’s killing spree years later, Osha being framed as a Jedi killer, and the Republic Senate being on the brink of discovering the truth about what the Jedi had done. Senator Rayencourt in particular was pushing for an investigation into the Jedi, which, had it uncovered this truth, could have been the Jedi Order’s undoing.
In that sense, one incident of a child misspeaking nearly brought down the Jedi Order 100 years before the prequels, which really just goes to show how flawed and fragile the Jedi already were at that point.
The Jedi Were Always A Lot More Unstable Than They Seemed
Although this depiction of the Jedi Order as flawed and fragile was one of the controversies about The Acolyte, this was actually something we knew prior to the show. The Jedi maintained a reputation as the peacekeepers and stable protectors of the galaxy, but that wasn’t exactly the case, at least not in the time leading up to the prequels.
On the contrary, by the prequel era, the Jedi had pulled back from their temples across the galaxy, instead centralizing on Coruscant. In conjunction with this move, which proved controversial for some who felt abandoned by the Jedi, the Order became much more entangled in politics and war; this was a key part of their downfall.
It may be a tough pill to swallow, particularly because Vernestra Rwoh’s cover-up in the Acolyte ending feels so underhanded, but, in reality, The Acolyte only further exemplified the flaws within the Jedi Order that Star Wars has elucidated many times before.
The Acolyte
7/10
- Release Date
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2024 – 2024-00-00
- Showrunner
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Leslye Headland
- Directors
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Leslye Headland, Alex Garcia Lopez
