‘The Acolyte’ Episode Four Recap: “Day”

*Warning: the following article contains spoilers for episode four of The Acolyte*

First, the good news: This week’s episode of The Acolyte, titled “Day,” is a good one, especially after the horrendous filler episode we had last week. Now, the bad news: Disney+ still doesn’t know how to do a cliffhanger ending. Minus Andor and X-Men ‘97, their episodic structures have left little to be desired. Just as the episode gets amazing, it clumsily wipes and cuts to the credits. It’s especially egregious when the dramatic tension is at its highest, and a cathartic release isn’t promised. 

Still, it’s a far better-paced, written, and acted episode than last week’s, thwarting us immediately into the action as Mae (Amandla Stenberg) and Qimir (Manny Jacinto) are on the lookout for Kelnacca (Joonas Suotamo), the next Jedi on her kill list. Meanwhile, Osha (Amandla Stenberg) joins a team assembled by Sol (Lee Jung-jae) to hunt down Mae before Kelnacca gets killed on his planet. 

Osha, Sol, Yord (Charlie Barnett), and Jecki (Dafne Keen) travel to Khofar in the hopes they will catch Mae before she kills Kelnacca, with Vernestra (Rebecca Henderson) telling the Jedi master that they must do it quietly so they can learn who trained Mae. However, on the planet, Mae begins to have a change of heart in killing Kelnacca after seeing Osha alive. The dynamic between the two characters (thanks to Stenberg’s impeccable dual performance) is far more tantalizing than what we saw last week. 

How Stenberg balances the two contrasting protagonists is so riveting to watch; it more than makes up for the odd screenwriting choices writers Clare Kiechel and Kor Adana make in the episode’s latter half, where Mae decides no longer to follow the path that her (yet to be revealed) master wants her to follow and ultimately surrender herself to the Jedi. That makes only a bit of sense since, in the third episode, their rivalry was established as a major rift in how they perceive the Jedi and the witches. That entire (badly stitched together) arc is now thrown out the window in favor of a choice that, for now, makes zero shred of sense…unless it’s a ruse, which I suspect it may be. 

Still, it doesn’t take long for us to realize that Mae’s master has been playing her and might have known of her (real or not) change of heart, as, when she arrives at Kelnacca’s whereabouts, she finds the Wookie dead, with a fresh lightsaber cut sliced in his stomach. There have been many narrative subversions in the show so far, but none have fully stuck the landing for me since we have very little knowledge of the Jedi’s connections to Osha and Mae, minus Sol, with whom we spend the most time. Perhaps we’ll fill in the blanks again through flashbacks (which I’m dreading), because creator Leslye Headland’s presentation of the characters is paper-thin at best, but without any compelling development as the show progresses. 

But, hey, we got Bazil! One of the best additions to the ‘cute mascot that’ll send a bunch of toys’ canon since the Porgs in Star Wars: The Last Jedi. Everything this dude is doing is intentionally funny, and the comedy is well-balanced with the episode’s heavier themes. I’ll gladly take more of him (or them) this side of the galaxy than most of the humor in the third season of The Mandalorian. 

It’s a shame the episode ends with such a whimper, and it could’ve gone for a conclusion in the middle of an action scene, just like X-Men ‘97 continuously did. It makes no sense for it to end during the beginning of what looked like an epic battle, where Mae’s master reveals themselves to the Jedi (without showing their face) and obliterates the entire group with one use of the Force. That alone made me excited to see how Headland would treat a proper lightsaber battle (which we still have not seen in this series so far), but it looks like we’ll have to wait until next week to see what happens. 

I’m not opposed to half-hour shows, provided this has been the case since The Acolyte’s inception. But honestly, how its endings have been structured doesn’t align with episodic storytelling’s potent cliffhangers. But this isn’t really an Acolyte problem. It’s more of a Disney+ problem, which I hope gets rectified as the studio begins to make (actual) television if you can believe it. But this week’s episode of The Acolyte was a massive improvement upon the abysmal last, and at least gives me hope that the show will satisfyingly continue to deliver, even if it has some narrative (and structural) shortcomings it may not overcome. 

The fourth episode of The Acolyte is now available to stream on Disney+.