The Sidekick's Stupidest Moment Is a Sign of Star Wars' Biggest Problems

The AcolyteThe third episode of raised many more questions than it answered. For example: what's going on with this Cult of the Force, how were Mae and Osha born, why are the Jedi here to begin with, why is the dialogue so bad, and what actually happened? passed in this fire? But the most important question of all is: how the hell did all that stone catch fire?

Of course, Star Wars is a series full of deep and complex stories, so here are our best attempts at explaining exactly how a mountain caught fire in The Acolyte.

[Ed. note: This post contains spoilers for Star Wars: The Acolyte episode 3.]

Before moving on to the explanations, it is important that we review the event in question a little. The fire in Brendok Mountain is the triggering incident for everything that is happening in The Acolyte. This is what separates Mae and Osha, and what gives them both diametrically opposed views on the Jedi. So when we got the flashback in Episode 3, it initially seemed like it was a complex event, full of childhood misunderstandings and missed perspectives. Maybe from what Osha saw, it seemed like Mae created the fire, while Mae saw that it was some sort of Jedi accident, leading to her hatred.

Unfortunately, none of this actually happens in the episode. Instead, we see little Mae clearly and unemotionally saying that she would rather kill her sister herself than see her leave and then set the entire mountain temple on fire. While the events leading up to the fire are a pretty extreme disappointment – even though the show could just be using this inexplicable child-murderer plot as a smokescreen for a later surprise – it's still the fire itself- even who seems the stupidest. Mae takes Osha's sketchbook, lights its pages with a lamp, then throws it into the stone hallway… which quickly catches fire as if it were made of dry wood. This is where we need to meet the show more than halfway.

Theory 1: The theory of alternative materials

Maybe what looked like stone inside the mountain was actually a different material? While most of the temple we see on Brendok in The AcolyteThe third episode of appears to be dug directly into the mountain, perhaps the coven of witches actually lined the interior tunnels of their home with an extremely flammable, non-rocky material.

It's the stupidest, most backdoor theory possible, but it's also a bit of an old-fashioned Star Wars explanation. Much like starting fires in space or the scream of TIE fighters, it's something stupid and fun that defies all explanations of Earth science, and that's fine. Of course, it would be a little easier to digest if The Acolyte took themselves a little less seriously, and what if the fire in question didn't leave so many of the people involved paralyzed with guilt, full of regret, hell-bent on revenge, or just plain dead. It's great to encounter silly problems with silly answers, but tragedies deserve something a little more thoughtful.

Theory 2: The hidden culprit theory

This theory revolves around the idea that what we saw in episode 3 was only part of the story. Sure, Mae made a childish and reckless claim that she wanted to kill her sister, but the fire in her sketchbook should have simply gone out, except another author used the Force to spread the flames.

The most likely outcome of a theory like this would be that someone from Mae and Osha's clan fanned the flames to try to get the girls out and blame the Jedi. The culprit here would probably be the witch Zabrak who seemed to have a bit of a power struggle with the twins' mother. Maybe she's stronger and more dangerous, and then she showed up and simply decided that destroying the coven house and separating Mae and Osha would be the only way forward for the witches. She could even be the dark figure who trains Mae in the future and gives her the task of killing the Jedi who visited Brendok.

An even more exciting version of this theory, however, is that all of this destruction was always caused by the Jedi. Mae, despite her horrific proclamation that she was going to murder the only other child she had ever known, was essentially blameless and was trapped and then left to die by a band of Jedi desperate to get their hands on a promising new recruit . . That would be truly shocking. Not entirely out of step with the dark edges lurking around the Jedi in Star Wars canon (after all, how TO DO they have all these young recruits?), but still more courageous and interesting than almost anything we've seen from them on screen.

Making the Jedi the true villains of the Brendok Fire would mark a significant indictment of the Jedi of the High Republic, an example of their determination to be judge, jury, and executioner for this aberrant extremist cult. Just because they determined the cult was evil, they massacred everyone and attempted to steal both children, but even when that proved too difficult, they simply took one and left the 'other die.

Even despite what would be the stupid attempt to hijack the series and its often frustrating dialogue or identical characters, this reveal would be truly exciting. A real, bold take on a certain era in Jedi history that, at least in some sectors of the galaxy, was far darker than we ever thought possible.

Theory 3: Disney's Star Wars Theory

The third theory is the simplest of all: The Acolyte is simply a deeply unserious series, interested in saying something new about the Jedi, the Force, or the Star Wars universe more broadly, but too concerned with appearances to get the details right – both in terms of storytelling and of history. This theory suggests that there is nothing more to the events than what we saw on screen: Mae started a fire to try to kill her sister; this became bigger than she thought and had far-reaching consequences that she blames on the Jedi while evading her own role. With this theory, even if the Jedi made a few mistakes, it would still go away, with most of them ultimately being heroic, leaving everything basically the same place it started.

On paper, this theory would be a profound disappointment. In practice, though, it feels like what we should expect from most modern Star Wars stories. These projects rarely have the courage to really shake up the franchise and introduce something truly shocking, always returning the status quo at the end, or simply pushing towards events whose outcome we already know.

Star Wars is firmly in an era of stagnation. So hoping for something fun, interesting, or daring from a very silly fire, even if it's set in a totally new time period, is probably a bit more than we should expect from the series at all. this stage. Instead, it's hard not to imagine that The AcolyteThe biggest moment so far is nothing more than a rock that inexplicably caught fire because the plot needed it to.