Did I just boldly state that The Acolyte is peak Star Wars? Yes, I did, and proudly, because it is. When I watched the third episode, Destiny, a couple of days ago, I was locked from the beginning. This episode, which turns out to be a forty-minute-long flashback to get us somewhat caught up on what happened in the Force-sensitive twins’ pasts, is amazing beyond belief. The $180 million budget for the series can be felt in every frame, and the story feels like it’s been written by someone that not only understands Star Wars but loves it.
Throughout the episode, I found myself swept along with the storylines, and was on more than one occasion, entranced by Jodie Turner-Smith’s Mother Aniseya and her storyline. It’s always fun meeting new characters with new beliefs about the force in this franchise. Star Wars is known to feel a bit repetitive in its storytelling. It’s why I wasn’t very fond of this year’s Tale of the Empire series, a handful of animated shorts that shared some further character development for Morgan Elsbeth and Barriss Offee (we’re tired of seeing the same old stories, Dave Filoni.) Mother Aniseya and her coven of witches, however, felt fresh and new, and that’s what I want to see in this franchise.
And not only did we get to meet these new characters, but we got to see why Master Sol bond with Osha, and now we know why he cares for her so much. I was utterly captivated by this episode, and when it ended, I went straight to Twitter (or X, whatever you call it) to share my excitement. The visceral reaction against my simple tweet was not what I expected.
So this was my tweet, it got reposted by Star Wars which was nice…and then the Fandom Menace arrived and posted over 700 comments saying despicable garbage like this.
And this is just a smidgeon of what my notifications looked like. I resisted muting the tweet because I thought the comments would stop and they only amused me at first. But then, I noticed that they were, in fact, not stopping, and I couldn’t believe it. Here I was, expressing my own personal opinion about a series that I personally love, and here comes the Fandom Menace flooding my notifications with toxicity, racism, bigotry, and homophobia. And all of this is because of something as simple as a Star Wars show.
I have watched as this franchise that I love so much began to spiral into a chasm for all of the worst rhetoric to be poured out into the universe. It began when John Boyega played Finn, the first Black stormtrooper, in The Force Awakens, and a sect of people began to scream about how that didn’t make any sense.
They then proceeded to bully Daisy Ridley and Kelly Marie Tran off of social media (Daisy Ridley has since returned to Instagram, which I’m happy about) and have gone on a nine-year tirade about Disney has “woke-ified” Star Wars. It’s gotten so toxic on some platforms, like Twitter, that a simple tweet like mine will get attacked by a horde of whining bots.
Usually, when I notice stuff like this, I don’t write about it, but I felt I had to in this instance. As a Black woman, seeing this much diversity in Star Wars is honestly a remarkable moment. I remember when I used to watch the prequels and original trilogy and I would ask myself, “Where are the women in the galaxy?” Sure, you would see women here and there, but they were so scarce to find. And the only primary characters were Padme Amidala and Leia Organa. And then, if I wanted to see Black characters, there was only Lando Calrissian (who had a villainous turn for a moment), Mace Windu, and Captain Panaka in The Phantom Menace. That’s it!
Even in the cartoons, there wasn’t much to latch onto in terms of diversity. They finally gave us Ahsoka Tano, which was a relief, but that was it. To now have a series with so many diverse, fascinating characters is an utter dream come true. And for this series to be this good is all the more rewarding.
So, suffice it to say, this has been a strange week to be a Star Wars fan, but I’m absolutely thrilled to see what happens next week and how this story will continue to unfold in increasingly exciting ways.
I thank you for reading, and I hope you have a wonderful day. May the Force be with you.
Annlyel Online 
For what it’s worth, Threads seems to have a somewhat less toxic discussion going about Acolyte. While there’s no shortage of twerps using all the usual code words for “get all these POC and/or women off my screen”, I have generally found that there’s quite a few actual positive discussions about it on my feed. More than once, I’ve found myself using the GIF of Vader telling Kenobi that Anakin is gone to sub caption that X has firmly gone over to the dark side, “Twitter is gone… I am what remains.”
I have my own theories on my blog that I’ve dropped on Threads and have had positive exchanges about them. 🫠
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That’s great. I remain on X because it’s my favorite social media platform, but it’s been hard seeing all of this negativity for a show that is actually really good. I’m glad to see that there’s positivity on Threads. I think I’ll have to look and see what everyone is saying.
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