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How trustworthy are the Jedi, really? The latest Star Wars: The Acolyte episode brings the controversial question to light

What do the Brendok Jedi know, and when did they know it?

The Acolyte
Image credit: Lucasfilm

Perhaps fittingly for a murder mystery where you know the culprit — well, kind of — but not all the details, there’s something that’s not quite adding up about what we’ve found out about the backstory of Mae in the Star Wars prequel The Acolyte three episodes into the series. Join us as we fall down the rabbit hole of conspiracy theories based on episodes two and three.

Spoiler warning! Stop reading now if you haven’t watched the third episode of The Acolyte, and want to remain mercifully unaware of the big reveals!

The third episode of the series certainly seems to explain everything about what happened 16 years ago on the planet Brendok to separate Mae and Osha, and bring Osha to the Jedi, believing that her sister was dead. On the face of what is shown, it’s easily understandable why Sol and the other Jedi would believe that Mae had died in the temple, even. Except… is there more to the story than meets the eye on first glance?

Maybe I’m just suspicious, but… it feels like something happened in the unaccounted-for time between Osha collapsing inside the burning temple and waking up onboard the Jedi ship, right…? I have two reasons to believe this: firstly, Sol wasn’t entirely convincing when he told her that the Jedi had searched for her sister and failed to find her, and secondly… surely what we saw in this episode isn’t enough to have led to Jedi Master Torbin essentially committing suicide in the previous episode after telling the adult Mae that he’d been expecting her…? (Not least of all because, if everything was as it seemed in the third episode, why would Torbin have been expecting Mae, when he would have believed her dead?)

There is, I suspect, some level of conspiracy between the Jedi who visited Brendok and the temple… although what that conspiracy actually is, and how far-spread the conspiracy might reach, remain tantalizingly unanswered for now. There are, after all, five more episodes of the season to run, and undoubtedly more secrets to be revealed in each of them.

New episodes of The Acolyte airs weekly every Tuesday on Disney+ through July 16.



Get to know, understand, and love the Star Wars franchise more with our Star Wars watch order, guide to all the upcoming Star Wars movies & TV shows, and all the Star Wars movies and Star Wars TV shows ranked.

Graeme McMillan

Graeme McMillan: Popverse Editor Graeme McMillan (he/him) has been writing about comics, culture, and comics culture on the internet for close to two decades at this point, which is terrifying to admit. He completely understands if you have problems understanding his accent.

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