The Acolyte S1E1 "Lost/Found" / Recap - TV Tropes (2024)

"Jedi do not attack the unarmed."

On the planet Ueda, the Jedi Master Indara is murdered by a mysterious Force User. Unwilling to let their opponents exploit this incident, the Jedi Order sends the Knight Yord to arrest the suspect, a former Padawan named Osha who now works as a freelance meknek. However, the ship transporting Osha and her fellow prisoners goes down over the planet Carlac; an unconscious Osha has visions of her assumed deceased twin Mae. Meanwhile, Vernestra Rwoh sends her fellow Jedi Master Sol, along with Sol's Padawan Jecki and Yord, to collect Osha. Osha tells Sol that Mae is alive.

On a mysterious planet, Mae approaches a dark, hooded figure wielding a red lightsaber.

Tropes:

• Bad Boss: The Trade Federation captain considers the lives of technicians like Osha and Fillik expendable, though he seems surprised to realize that he said so over an open comm line.
• Bait-and-Switch: Most of the first half of the episode suggests that Osha was the one who killed Indara, until the reveal of Mae's identity.
• Batman Gambit: Mae, the titular "acolyte", manages to use Master Indara's compassion against her when she throws a dagger at a bartender, distracting her just long enough for Mae to drive a knife into her heart.
• Bullying a Dragon: Subverted; Mae's challenge to Master Indara is met with incredulous laughter by the other bar patrons, who clearly can't believe a random young woman would dare to challenge a Jedi to attack her. Mae, however, has had some training in the Force herself, and although she has to resort to threatening innocent people to win, she manages to kill Indara.
• Call-Forward:
  • The ship Osha and Fillik are working on belongs to the Trade Federation. They wouldn't be a major threat to the Republic until The Phantom Menace, a century after this episode. We even get to see the Neimoidians, and like Nute Gunray, they're less than enthused about having a Jedi Knight and his Padawan aboard their ship.
  • During his students' group meditation, Sol makes a point of teaching his pupils that their eyes can deceive them. One youngling also mentions being able to sense life and balance through the Force, just like Rey will during her Jedi training on Ahch-To.
  • The planet Osha crashes on is Carlac, the planet would be home to a base for Death Watch 112 years later.
  • This won't be the last time we'll see a Padawan wrongly accused of murder cornered and backed up against a ledge by her mentor. Thankfully, things go much better for Osha and Sol than they did for Ahsoka and Anakin. Also, both Osha and Ahsoka left the Order, the difference being that Ahsoka left after this occurred.
• Contrived Coincidence:
  • A prison ship is manned by droids, and one of the prisoners on board has a device where his eyes would be; he basically fires an EMP from this device to take out the piloting droids, starting an prisoner escape. You would think in a universe as advanced like this, such tricks would have happened before and the authorities would know how to prevent it.
  • One also has to wonder how the Jedi even managed to track down Osha based on the word of one eyewitness, especially considering how she was in a completely different part of the galaxy.
• Creepy Child: Osha's dream of herself and Mae as children has the latter calmly admit to murdering Indara and promise to "kill them all" as her eyes turn solid black. According to Sol, the fire that killed Osha's family was started by Mae, implying that Osha's dream may have been at least somewhat true to life.
• Dead Star Walking: Master Indara, played by the well-known Carrie-Anne Moss, is dead by the end of the first scene.
• Description Cut: When Jecki objects to working with Yord on account of it being Yord, Sol asks what's wrong with Yord. They board the ship to find Yord in the middle of laundry and half naked.
• Establishing Character Moment: Mae is introduced bribing an informant for the location of a Jedi Master, whom she challenges to "attack me with all your strength" upon finding her. The resulting fight shows off Mae's combat skill, her lack of power and refinement in the Force, and her ruthless adaptability as she resorts to attacking bystanders to leave Indara open for a killing blow.
• The Farmer and the Viper: Osha stays behind to free the last prisoner from his parasite, and he immediately takes the last escape pod and leaves her to die. To be fair, he's obviously mentally ill and also still drugged up from the parasite, and once Sol gets him to calm down a bit he's clearly ashamed of it.
• First-Episode Twist: Indara was not murdered by Osha, but rather by her Evil Twin sister Mae.
• Foreshadowing: There are a number of hints to the assassin's true identity before the episode confirms it.
  • Indara initially seems to recognize Osha by her face, then sees the tattoo on her forehead and gets confused, asking how she could be there. It's later revealed that this tattoo designates Mae, Osha's twin sister who was presumed dead.
  • While the assassin had no problem threatening innocent people to get a shot at killing Indara, Osha takes the time to help someone she's been informed is a violent criminal when the prison ship is about to crash, showing that she's not the sort to let bystanders be hurt if she can help it.
  • Mae is mentioned a few times (when Sol and Vernestra recount Osha's backstory, when Osha herself flashes back to the fire that killed her parents, when Sol speaks of Osha's childhood to Jecki and Yord) before being established as Osha's twin, a bit of information that quickly makes Yord and Jecki start wondering if Osha is truly guilty.
  • Mae is shown using the Force to pull her blades back into her hand. Later, onboard the crashing prison ship, Osha is unable to use the Force to pull the security droid's arm into her hand revealing her lack of practice since her departure from Jedi Order.
  • Osha's hair is visibly shorter than the assassin's, and while it's hard to tell through her bangs, there is no tattoo on her forehead.
• Forgot About His Powers: For whatever reason, none of the Jedi use their mind-reading ability on Osha to confirm her innocence. It's especially jarring since they did so towards one escaped convict in this episode.
• Guilty Until Someone Else Is Guilty: Osha is arrested on the word of one eyewitness who seems rather off from her location who identifies her as the killer of a Jedi Master. This not only warrants Jedi to investigate a charge against a woman with an ironclad alibi (which they don't even check), she's put onto a prison barge to stand trial on Coruscant, rather than sector security verifying where she was last night and letting her go when they realize there's no mortal way she could've done it. As the Republic doesn't practise Guilty until Proven Innocent (as evidenced by Anakin stating that Palpatine had to stand trial for treason in Revenge of the Sith), this comes off as them assuming she's guilty on very little evidence. Even better, this accusation (and maybe security footage but that's not a given) is treated as a preponderance of evidence, enough for her to be immediately arrested (without, again, even checking her alibi or making sure that it's otherwise valid.^note). The only reason Osha gets out of being arrested again is that Sol believes her when she says Mae did it, which soon gets confirmed when they find she's alive and goes after more Jedi. A lot of this can be chalked up to the pressure the Jedi are under to Make an Example of Them, but it doesn't look good no matter what the reason is for it.
• Hope Crusher: In the final scene, Mae's mysterious Master explains in a voiceover that the only way to truly defeat a Jedi is to "kill their dreams".

  The Master: The Jedi live in a dream. A dream they believe everyone shares. If you attack a Jedi with a weapon, you will fail. Steel or laser are no threat to them. But an Acolyte... An Acolyte kills without a weapon. An Acolyte...kills the dream.

• Idiot Ball: Despite arresting Osha over suspicions of killing a Jedi Master, the Jedi simply escort her to a prison ship is manned by simple droids, with none of them even keeping an eye on her afterwards. Needless to say, this was just asking for trouble.
• Informed Ability: Mae's master tells Mae that "steel or laser are no threat to the Jedi", even though Master Indara was literally killed by Mae's kunai.
• Irony: When Osha says she'll trust Jedi justice rather than try to escape, the other convicts laugh and tell her to enjoy prison. After the escape attempt (where they leave Osha to die), the convicts are next seen having been easily recaptured, while Osha's encounter with the Jedi ends with Master Sol believing her when she protests her innocence.
• Kick the Dog: After Osha refuses to help in their escape attempt, the other convicts laugh while leaving her on the doomed ship and after being captured, try to pin the whole escape on her.
• Live-Action Adaptation: Vernestra Rwoh was an original character created for the High Republic book series. This is her first appearance in live action.
• Make an Example of Them: Vernestra Rwoh's reasoning for prosecuting Osha; if word gets out that an ex-Jedi killed a Master, then the Order's political enemies would happily use that against them, so the supposed killer needs to be swiftly found and punished to show that the Jedi won't accept such discord.
• Martial Pacifist: Indara initially refuses Mae's challenge on the basis that Jedi don't attack unarmed opponents. Mae insists that they do, and attacks the other patrons in the bar to encourage Indara to fight her. Even then, Indara doesn't draw her lightsaber until after Mae has proven willing to threaten innocent lives to provoke her.
• No-One Could Have Survived That: Sol initially waves off the thought that Mae was the one that committed the murder because he personally saw her die, which is also the reason that Osha having a twin sister wasn't common knowledge among the Order.
• No OSHA Compliance: For once, subverted. Mekneks work on the outer hulls of spaceships with minimal safety considerations, but Yord reveals that this practice was officially banned by the Republic. Rather ironic that someone named Osha is doing such dangerous work.
• Permission to Speak Freely: Jecki feels obligated to ask Sol's permission before speaking freely. Sol tells her that she doesn't need to ask.
• Please Put Some Clothes On: Milder than most (Yord is only shirtless), but Sol and Jecki are fairly exasperated to see that he started doing laundry on duty and Jecki bluntly tells him to put his clothes on.
• Prison Ship: Osha is put on one to Coruscant for her trial when she's arrested for the murder of Jedi Master Indara. The other prisoners break out and crash the ship with her aboard mid-flight, though all are easily recaptured.
• Skewed Priorities: Yord hears that he's scheduled to go out with Sol and Jecki, and decides to immediately use the onboard laundry facilities to clean his robe. Without even having another robe on standby, meaning he's standing around shirtless.
• Swiss-Cheese Security: The Prison Ship Osha is put on has pretty bad security. A cyborg prisoner on board is able to disable the droids piloting it and then all of the prisoners easily escape via the escape pods. In fairness, they all get recaptured soon enough (offscreen mostly), but that's a lot of holes.
• Trauma Button: Osha briefly freezes and hears echoes of her family's deaths when she sees a fire spring up on the outside of the ship she's working on.
• Twins Are Special: When Osha dreams of Mae, Mae says a rhyme about them being one person born as two, and Osha completes it.
• Villainous Underdog: Mae is clearly outmatched by Master Indara in a contest of raw power, and her throwing knives do nothing against a lightsaber, forcing her to resort to threatening innocent bystanders to get a shot at actually killing Indara.