With the first two episodes of Star Wars: The Acolyte now streaming on Disney+, below is my recap of Episode 2.
Episode 2 of The Acolyte, entitled “Revenge / Justice,” begins on the planet Olega (newly introduced here), which does resemble the location where Mae (played by Amandla Stenberg) met with her mysterious master at the end of the premiere. Here Mae uses the help of a street urchin to break into the local Jedi temple in order to assassinate Master Torbin (Dean-Charles Chapman from Game of Thrones and 1917), but is thwarted by an invisible Force-field (pun intended) projected by the Jedi Master during his self-imposed meditative “Barash Vow” (now this particular deep-cut term does require knowledge of The High Republic books and comics to fully understand). So Mae makes her egress, but not before her presence is detected by another Jedi. Then, after the opening title, we return to the snow-planet Carlac, where the previous episode ended. Aboard the Jedi transport ship, Mae’s twin sister Osha (also Stenberg) and Padawan Jecki Lon (Dafne Keen) have a heart-to-heart, and Master Sol (Lee Jung-jae) is ordered via hologram by Vernestra Rwoh (Rebecca Henderson) to bring Osha to Olega for further investigation of this incident which may be tied to the recent murder of Master Indara.
On Olega, we are introduced to a mysterious apothecary name Qimir (The Good Place and Top Gun: Maverick’s Manny Jacinto), who Mae reports to in order to secure some poison that she believes will be more effective in killing Torbin than physical attacks. There are hints here that Qimir may have more going on than simply acting as Mae’s cohort in this task, but I’ll refrain from speculating too much on that theory in this recap. We also learn that Mae’s ultimate task is to murder four specific Jedi– one without the use of a weapon– in order to please her master. On the Jedi ship, Sol learns about Osha’s tattoo and talks with her a bit about what happened in her childhood, claiming he has made peace with the circumstances. Back in the Jedi temple, Osha successfully talks Torbin out of his trance, seemingly convincing him to take the poison, effectively killing himself. Around the same time, the Jedi protagonists arrive at the temple as well, and Osha follows a vision of young Mae down a hallway that leads to her discovering Torbin’s lifeless body. There’s a brief misunderstanding where Osha is made to appear guilty in the death, but Yord Fandar (Charlie Barnett) vouches for her, saying he had eyes on her the whole time. The empty vial of poison found at the scene then leads to the apothecary, though one Padawan stationed at the temple says he doesn’t recognize Qimir as the usual guy.
What follows is essentially a Jedi stakeout, which concludes with Osha going into the apothecary shop in disguise as Mae– wearing a “wire” that’s really part of her droid Pip– and getting Qimir to admit to providing the poison for the murder of Torbin. The Jedi confront him and end up letting him off with a warning after he throws Mae under the space-bus, and then there’s more staking out of the city streets, another pretty sweet Force-Fu fight sequence– this time between Sol and Mae– and a chase scene that ends with Osha quasi-deliberately missing her stun-blast shot and Mae getting away, for now. With that failure, the Jedi are called back to Coruscant, and another meeting between Mae and Qimir points to the “relaxing forest retreat” planet of Khofar, where the Wookiee Jedi Kelnacca has apparently been living in exile as well. We get a very brief scene on Khofar with Kelnacca scaring away a pair of looters by demonstrating his brute strength and use of the Force, and then another abrupt ending for episode 2 of The Acolyte.
The first two episodes of Star Wars: The Acolyte are now available to stream, exclusively via Disney+. Read my review of the series’ first four episodes here.