In its penultimate episode, The Acolyte goes back sixteen years again and fills in the blanks from the first flashback episode. This time, we see the events at Brendock from the point of view of the Jedi and learn what really happened.

I deduced two things while watching this episode. One, this episode should have been edited with the first flashback episode. With that in mind, I can’t help but feel The Acolyte was actually a four-episode show that got stretched into eight. The first flashback episode felt very choppy and incomplete and that was by design. I really think this arc would’ve played out a lot better had we gotten the whole story from the get-go. Because the third episode was so incomplete, it seemed logical that there would be more to come. Plus, the whole coven of witches was shown dead but not burned, so we knew there was more to be told. So why not just package the whole story together and save us from seeing certain scenes play out again?

With that in mind, the revelations in episode seven didn’t come off as that shocking. In fact, most of the revelations seemed dumb. Mae set the fire but didn’t intend for it to get so out of control. Not so surprising. It also seems like Mother Koril survived, setting her up to be one of the Sith in the final episode of the series. Then there’s some instances that just felt dumb, like Torbin causing a domino effect because he was..bored? Then the whole coven of witches dies en mass because their link to Kelnacca was severed by Moss’ Master Indara. But…why?

There were some upsides though. More Carrie-Anne Moss is never a bad thing and it was nice to see her as a more level-headed character, unwilling to get involved and then willing to lie to protect the Jedi, even if the lie was kind of dumb. The Jedi being on Brendock looking for a Vergeance in the Force, something first mentioned in The Phantom Menace was neat, and learning that Mae and Osha are identical in every sense of the word does explain why Sol couldn’t tell them apart when he was alone with Mae last week. Plus, we got to see a Wookie throw down with a lightsaber and while it wasn’t as cool as episode five’s big fight, it was still a live-action first.

Episode seven continued the trend of The Acolyte maybe being great on paper but being a mixed bag in execution. There’s some good ideas and concepts at play, but having two flashback episodes in the whole show felt tedious and I think crosscutting between both the twins’ and the Jedi’s perspectives would not have harmed the show, if anything it would’ve been an improvement. With one episode left, I’m not sure how they’re going to wrap everything up, especially if the episode is less than forty minutes, but I’m not exactly pumped with excitement to see the conclusion for fear of a sloppy conclusion.