Drama
Orphan Black: Echoes
The Orphan Black franchise is back. And its new show echoes the violence, profanity and homosexual romance from the original.
“Your eyes can deceive you. You must not trust them.”
So says Sol, a Jedi teacher to his young pupils. It’s one of the first lessons a Jedi must learn—to trust the Force over one’s own senses. And for centuries, that trust has served the Jedi well.
The Republic has been the political center of the galaxy for all that time, of course. But the Republic’s right hand has always been its Jedi: it’s foremost police officers, sage advisers and moral centers.
But lately, there’s been a disturbance in the Force, and the galaxy itself. Someone’s been killing Jedi. Yeah that’s … not easy. And folks are saying that the killer is the spitting image of Osha, one of Sol’s old padawans.
Your eyes can deceive you, Sol says. And for his sake—and for Osha’s—he certainly hopes so.
When the Jedi order tracks Osha down, the woman seems just as surprised as anyone else. Who, me? Guilty? Osha might’ve left the Order before her apprenticeship was done, but she says she harbors no ill will toward the Jedi.
But could she be lying? After all, the killer’s first victim was Indara, who had been head of a small group of Jedi stationed on Osha’s home planet of Brendock some16 years before. The Jedi’s presence there is linked to disaster: Shortly before Osha was plucked from the planet’s surface to undergo her Jedi training, a fire ripped through Osha’s community and killed her entire family.
Could it be that the killer is after the other Jedi stationed on Brendock that fateful day? Might Torbin, the one-time young Padawan, be in danger? What about Kelnacca, the fearsome Wookie warrior? Might the killer be after the kindly Master Sol himself?
It looks like Sol has a murder mystery on his hands, and he trusts Osha enough to accept her help. But in this mystery, Sol can only count on two things. One, the butler didn’t do it. And two, the eyes can deceive you—even those of a Jedi Master.
Is it my imagination? Or has the Star Wars universe gotten a bit murky as of late?
Long, long ago, in a galaxy far, far away, the charm of Star Wars could be found in its optimistic simplicity. Jedi: good. Empire: bad. And while that’s still mostly the case, the Star Wars universe has grown more complex and, often, darker.
Sometimes that can be to the franchise’s benefit. Andor unpacked what the rebellion might’ve really looked like away from those swashbuckling Jedi, and the show proved to be a tour de force of cloak-and-dagger machinations and moral ambiguity.
But lately, the franchise has been focusing, literally, on The Dark Side. Ahsoka introduced a live-action audience to the duplicitous Grand Admiral Thrawn and the Force-using “witch,” Morgan Elsbeth. (Though, admittedly both had been seen in the animated Star Wars: Rebels.) On May 4 of 2024, it unveiled a new animated show called Tales of the Empire, wherein the backstories of Elsbeth and a prominent ex-Jedi Barriss Offee.
The Acolyte again turns its own eyes toward the darkness—directing its gaze toward a time period 100 years before the Empire existed, when the Jedi Order was strong and unquestioned. And in it, we witness seeds of possible discontent against that order being sowed, and perhaps not without cause.
The Jedi seem good enough, but the emphasis might be on the “enough” part, and not so much on the “good.” Politics seem to be as driving a force in the order as, well, the Force itself is, and the Jedi’s high-minded rhetoric may not go along with their actions all the time. Force-using witches show up here, too—but they’re presented as just a persecuted religious minority, if you will, put upon by the established order.
Perhaps all that is unavoidable, given The Acolyte’s place on the Star Wars timeline. We know this series—whether it ends happily or not—is one more brick in the road toward the Empire. And rarely do such dictatorships spring from nothing.
But this show doesn’t just dabble in the universe’s darker complexities. The Acolyte seems to ramp up the violence slightly, too.
We see that from the opening whistle, when the killer tangles with Indara. The assassin’s out for blood, and gets it. And she’s willing to threaten innocent lives to distract her target. Violence, murder and wholesale slaughter are on tap here. And while Star Wars has always dealt with plenty of death—the very first film featured the destruction of an entire planet, after all—it feels a bit more personal here.
In Episode 3, we get a lot more information about Mae and Osha’s two mothers, as well as some conversation about how their daughters were created (apparently involving some forbidden means). We also get touch of mild cursing. And the Force is a huge part of the story here—a story that tries to merge its Eastern, yin-yang origins with its new reliance on “witches” to those more empirical midichlorians (the microscopic life forms that make people Force-sensitive and such).
Story-wise, The Acolyte isn’t a bad show (though it’s far from Andor or The Mandalorian at its best). And it takes viewers into a realm that hasn’t really been explored—those heady, mostly peaceful pre-Empire days.
But as Sol would be sure to remind us, appearances can be deceptive. And families might not want to trust what The Acolyte shows them.
(Editor’s Note: Plugged In is rarely able to watch every episode of a given series for review. As such, there’s always a chance that you might see a problem that we didn’t. If you notice content that you feel should be included in our review, send us an email at [email protected], or contact us via Facebook or Instagram, and be sure to let us know the episode number, title and season so that we can check it out.)
In the wake of Kelnacca’s murder, Sol and his phalanx of Jedi battle Mae’s dark, masked master. Before the lightsabers are put away, people die, others are unmasked, and the plot takes a curious turn.
The episode is, in large part, one massive running melee—the masked master and (sometimes) Mae on one side, with Sol, Osha and the rest of the Jedi on the other. And from a violence standpoint, it’s surely one of the most wince-worthy television episodes in the Star Wars canon.
Several combatants are run through with lightsabers. We see the blades jut out of people’s backs or chests (one poor soul suffers three such front-to-back wounds, which are obviously fatal), and someone seems to be decapitated just off camera.
A neck is snapped. Someone is attacked and carried off by giant insects. People fight with their fists and feet, too. Stun blasts are fired, sometimes successfully incapacitating their targets. Combatants use the Force to throw adversaries against rocks and push them off ledges. A knife is shoved against someone’s throat.
We hear several references to Mae’s and Osha’s family, and the fire that killed them all. A Force wielder appears to have the ability to use that power to get inside someone’s head. People lie and mislead, and we hear intimations of a potentially catastrophic betrayal.
Mae, with helpmate Qimir in tow, arrives on the planet Khofar to kill the third of four Jedi on her assassination list: Kelnacca, a fearsome Wookie with a talent for fixing things. Osha, Sol and other Jedi are there to stop her. But Osha goes reluctantly: She won’t be able to raise a weapon to kill her own sister, if it comes to that. “You need to stop her,” she tells Sol. “I won’t be able to do it.” Sol tells Osha that he believes Mae’s not beyond help: “There’s still some good in her,” he says. “the part in her that loves you.”
It seems Sol is right, because Mae is having some second thoughts about her turn to the Dark Side. Knowing her sister’s alive, she believes, changes everything. But her master—unseen until this episode—is not someone to be treated lightly.
Massive insects wrap themselves around trees on the planet. One attacks a character before the bug gets sliced in half. A character dies by an unknown hand. Jedi face off against a powerful adversary and seem, for the moment, to be overmatched. Mae’s master looks incredibly creepy. We hear a great deal about Mae’s promise to kill Jedi.
This flashback episode takes us to the planet Brendock, some 16 years in the past, when twins Osha and Mae were both just 8 years old. They’re in the care of their mothers, Koral and Anisaya (the latter of whom leads a Force-wielding coven of witches). But their childhoods are upended when Jedi land on the planet and seek to test the girls for their level of Force sensitivity.
Anisaya and the rest of the coven fear that if the girls display power, the Jedi will whisk them both away to train as Jedi. Mae has no desire to leave the coven, but Osha does: She would like to become a Jedi and see what’s beyond Brendock. The girls fight over whether the Jedi are good or bad, to which Anisaya says, “This isn’t about good or bad. This is about power and who is allowed to use it.”
But while Anisaya feels fairly antagonistic toward the Jedi, she also tells Osha that, if she chooses to go with them, she can. “You get to make a choice, Osha,” she says. “Fear should not make this decision. You should.” But Mae says that if Osha makes the wrong choice—that is, to leave the planet—she’ll kill her. Shortly thereafter, Mae ignites a book. That fire seems to spread and, we’re told, destroys the coven entirely.
Koral and Anisaya share a tender moment together, with one stroking the other’s cheek. The two women often argue about how to raise the girls. In one such discussion, Koral reminds Anisaya, “I carried them.” Anisaya responds, “I created them.” Koral reminds Anisaya that if the Jedi knew how those children were created, there’d be serious problems—suggesting some sort of forbidden Force magic was involved.
We see that Force in action—as well as the different ways that the twins use it. Mae, for instance, uses it to hold and torment a large bird/insect before Osha makes her stop. The two engage in some training with Anisaya, involving Force pushes. Mae sets the book on fire with the Force. Osha shows a remarkable ability to see hidden pictures or read minds. The all-female community led by Anisaya is repeatedly referred to as a coven, and we witness a religious-like ceremony.
A fire consumes that community. We see dead witches on the ground. Someone falls from a cliff, seemingly to her death. (Another person is saved from the same fate.) Koral warns Anisaya that if they fight back against the Jedi, the Jedi would surely destroy them all. Children disobey, and adults encourage children to lie.
Sol is convinced that Osha isn’t killing Jedi: The real culprit is her twin sister, Mae. And while Mae targets the second Jedi on her list—hoping to please her mysterious Master along the way—Sol, Osha and a small band of Jedi do what they can to stop her.
Mae’s target, a Jedi named Torbin, floats and meditates in a Jedi temple, cocooned in some sort of forcefield that repels her attacks. Foiled in her first attempt to kill him, she returns a second time and, in a way, completes the deed. We hear that Mae’s master wants Mae to kill at least one Jedi without using a weapon.
Someone is hit by a car-like vehicle, though she survives. Mae tangles with a few adversaries but escapes. We see another prolonged duel. Someone commits suicide. A couple of blaster shots (set to stun) go wide of the mark. It’s insinuated that the owner of an apothecary was killed. We hear stories about the tragedy that killed Osha and Mae’s family—and was presumed to have killed Mae as well.
A character ingests some intoxicating ingredients from an apothecary. Osha tells Sol she got a tattoo after a “crazy night with some of my crew.” We hear references to something called “the Barash vow,” which feels like a sort of quasi-religious promise made by Jedi. Someone uses the word “h—.”
An assassin is on the loose, and she’s already killed one of the galaxy’s most respected Jedi warriors. And wouldn’t you know it, that assassin is the spitting image of Osha, a one-time Jedi Padawan now working as a mektek, doing work on Trade Federation spaceships that the Federation doesn’t want to risk its droids doing. The Jedi (including Osha’s old friend Yord) arrest her and slap her on a prison transport bound for Coruscant. And when said transport crashes and most of the prisoners escape, things look even more grim for Osha. But Sol, Osha’s old master, suspects there’s more at work here.
The fight between the assassin and the Jedi (Indara) involves a great deal of frenetic activity. More than a dozen people get hit, thrown around and knocked unconscious. The assassin and Jedi take part in an impressive martial arts duel that ends with Indara being stabbed in the chest—something that would’ve never happened had she not been trying to protect an innocent civilian. (We see a trickle of blood from the wound.)
Prisoners take over a transport, with one tentacled convict ripping the head off of a droid guard. The craft crashes spectacularly on a cold-and-hostile planet, and one man surveying the wreckage later insists no one could’ve survived the crash. An explosion on the outside of the ship results in a small fire, which in turn causes Osha to flash back to a tragic childhood memory. (We don’t see anything crucial.) We hear about the toll of that tragedy, and how it killed Osha’s “mothers” and sister. Someone nearly falls off a ledge.
The Force is used frequently. Knives are stopped in mid-flight. People are caught in mid-air, keeping them from falling and hurting themselves. People jump quite high.
The opening fight takes place in a bar, and we see a few people drink. One of Osha’s coworkers asks why she missed a “wild night” with him and their pals. One of the prisoners on the transport has his mouth covered with some sort of animal-like patch. Someone calls it a “dybbuk” (also the name of a demon in Jewish folklore), and it does “weird stuff to your brain.”
Yord is shown without his shirt on. Characters lie.
Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.
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