The Acolyte Ep4 plays with the fire that is serialized mystery.

Featuring a listicle theorizing who that mysterious masked master is!

The Short Take: 

With a slow burn followed by a flashy finish, this episode kept me on my toes. I feel as though we have enough clues to solve one of the big mysteries. 

[SPOILER ALERT: If you have not seen The Acolyte through Episode 4, “Day,” turn back before you get too deep into the spoiler forest.]

Image Credit: Forbes

The Long Take: 

My only regret is that Kelnacca was already dead. 

This is a purely selfish complaint because while I have been impatiently awaiting some fierce Wookiee action for two episodes now, this particular casualty was worth the excitement of realizing that if someone murdered Kelnacca before Mae even stepped foot into his hermitage, that meant her dark, mysterious master was on Khofar too. I was just a couple seconds ahead of Mae saying, “He’s here.” And wow, what an entrance they made in the final few minutes! 

(And I use they here instead of he because we technically don’t know who’s behind that mask yet.) It was hard for me not to think of their helmet as a more metal or more horror-leaning Kylo Ren, but beyond that distracting thought, this unidentified figure had all the mystique and menace that I would want in a dark side Force user. 

In general, everything was pitch perfect in this final sequence. The light saber slash across Kelnacca’s chest. A dark, blurred silhouette that creepily FLOATS down behind Osha like a total Dracula boss. Jecki innocently asking, “What is that?” and notably not who is that. To me, that indicates that she is so stymied by what she sees — because she’s never seen anything like it before — she doesn’t even recognize it as a person. The bewildered, terrified look on a frozen Osha’s face. The igniting of a brilliant rainbow of seven Jedi lightsabers. The effortless Force flick that discards Osha like a fly. The Force push that billows dust everywhere, echoing the move Mae makes at the end of her fight with Sol. I was in prime gasping and yelling at the TV mode. 

Image Credit: IndieWire

I want to preemptively respond to two criticisms that I think some will make: that Kelnacca was a tease just like Carrie Anne Moss’ Indara, who died in the very first scene of the series, and that the episode up until the final scene is too slow. The former take is relatively more understandable to me because I too wanted to see more from Kelnacca, but I do think that we have quite a bit more flashback left in the season — at least one more full episode — and I’m holding out hope that we’ll get to see him do more then. The latter observation is partially right; the scenes leading up to this final burst of action are quieter and more conversation heavy, but I would not go so far as to say they were too slow. If I’m thinking of the overall pacing of the episode, I want the final scene to feel like a punctuation, and that’s only possible if the rest of the episode is more subdued in contrast. 

Plus, a final scene like this only packs a narrative punch if the stakes have been established though character relationships, and I do feel as though the conversations between Osha and Jecki (love the bond they have formed!), Osha and Yord (even if Yord is still a useless wet blanket, his theory about how Sol may want Osha to face herself as opposed to Mae ends up being correct), and Mae and Qimir (much more on that in a minute) do give us a sense of what personal investment some of these characters may have in the upcoming conflict.  

Considering how the episode builds and builds to an explosive, “can’t wait to see more” cliffhanger, I do feel as though it’s important to ask, once again: who is Mae’s master? While I think there are still technically a few possibilities, this episode, to me, honed in on one candidate more clearly. And so, I give you…

6 Reasons It’s Qimir and 2 Reasons It Might Not Be

Image Credit: StarWars.com

1. He’s there.

Using old-fashioned detective mystery logic, we need to consider who had the opportunity to race ahead of both Mae and the group of Jedi to murder Kelnacca. Sure, another entity could have been lurking in the forest in wait from the start of the episode, but it seems too coincidental that Mae has a change of heart, bails on her assassin assignment, and then someone else immediately does the job instead. The only one who actually knows that Mae is no longer planning to go through with it is Qimir. And, sure, you could say that he has an alibi because he was hanging upside down in Mae’s trap, but if he really is a powerful Force user disguised as an unkempt apothecary, he could get out of that fairly easily. Traditional mystery rules require that you have to use what the story has already give you to piece together what’s happening. And we see a lot of Qimir in this episode, seemingly for no reason. The idea that he had to go scout the planet and then guide Mae seems very contrived and very suspicious. Motive, the other staple of fictional crime solving, seems less clear because other than a general hatred of the Jedi, it’s unclear why the Master would want Kelnacca dead in general and not just dead as a way to help Mae learn her “final lesson.” As far as we know, only Mae and other members of her coven have a vested interest in exacting revenge on the Death List 4. (Bah, it’s too soon for counterarguments. And so we move on.) 

2. He cares. (And he’s trying way too hard to seem harmless.)

Qimir makes the most sense as the Master because the persona he presents — a bumbling, messy, loser — would be the perfect cover for a Sith or other kind of Dark Side Force user. And what better way to monitor your potential Acolyte’s progress and get the truth from her without having to reveal your identity?

Qimir is very nice to Mae. In episode two, he’s willing to make the secret poison for her. In this episode, he literally says “I care” and then offers to find Mae more water because she’s tired from their trek into the forest. This reminds me of Palpatine in the Prequel Trilogy more than anything. He positions himself as the one person in Anakin’s life who “gets it.” He doesn’t try to tell him what he can and can’t do like Obi-Wan or Mace Windu. And he earns Anakin’s trust by giving him all the support without any of the judgment. And his cover as a well-meaning, harmless bureaucrat with seemingly no combat training or physical power makes it so that Anakin never suspects that he could actually be a scheming Sith Emperor. Granted, Qimir seems to criticize Mae a lot more, calling out her failure to kill a Jedi without a weapon, but I think his potentially faux caring here functions in a similar way. 

To make this a full blown Star Wars tradition, you could even pull in Yoda in The Empire Strikes Back as a Light Side example of Qimir’s reliance on being underestimated. He seems like a dotty little old alien living a quiet life in a hut and Luke never suspects that he could be the fierce Jedi Master he’s been searching for all along. So it would make so much sense if we get a dramatic reveal in which Qimir chillingly transforms from buffoonish to formidable in his body language or uses his Force abilities in front of Mae to reveal his true self. There’s also history of this trope in Western fairy tales and folklore. Since I’m always ready with the Disney references, think of the opening of Beauty and the Beast. The Beast lives cursed in his castle because a powerful sorceress disguised herself as a poor old woman begging for help, testing his moral character. (Spoiler: he fails the test.) And while The Evil Queen in Snow White is a lot less convincing in her rouse, I also think of her tricking Snow White into eating the poisoned apple because she’s disguised as a “harmless” (again, she is way too bug-eyed for this to be believable, but who am I to judge) old woman. 

3. He’s cagey. (And shrouded!)

When Mae asks Qimir what kind of deal he made with their master, he gives a very vague response. In fact, he just says that he didn’t make a deal. “I didn’t. Uh..we didn’t exactly. I…I just owe him.” Of course, he doesn’t say why he owes him (because he’s making it up). And, even more suspiciously, he changes pronouns when giving his answer. He starts with “I didn’t, but then switches to “we didn’t.” If he had just said I didn’t, no one would have batted an eye. But the switching from I to we indicates that the I maybe was said in error, as if Qimir realized that he was referring himself to as the master rather than as another person who owes the master. 

He is also physically cloaked all the time, and I don’t think it’s purely to achieve a vagabond chic look. I wasn’t initially planning to out myself as someone who paused my Disney+ stream to get a closer look at the features of the Master, but it works too well on a figurative and literal level. The arms of the Master seem to be ashy and gray, almost as if they had been burned. It could be bandages, but either way it seems, again, too coincidental that Qimir’s arms have always been covered up and the Master has something funky going on with their arms. I know that sounds like it would have been someone on Brendok because of the big, super sus fire. But maybe Qimir has some connection to Brendok that we don’t know about (he did, after all, know what bunta was) or chose Mae as his acolyte because he had also survived a Jedi-induced fire on his own planet. 

Image Credit: StarWars.com

4. He knows which buttons to push. 

When I went back and rewatched the Qimir/Mae walk and talk, two things occurred to me that hadn’t before: Mae seems to be interrogating Qimir, trying to get information from him. This COULD* (and I say this as wild speculation) be Osha impersonating Mae again, but the main reason that is unlikely is that in Episode 2, Qimir seemed to be able to tell that Osha was not Mae pretty quickly when she tried the same thing in the apothecary. That said, I can’t shake the way Mae looks askance and then delivers the line “I can’t believe my sister’s Jedi scum.” It feels so much like a contrived “okay… what do I have to say to get this guy talking” as opposed to a natural part of their conversation. 

More importantly, Qimir, if he is the Master, isn’t going to fall for anything. Instead, he comes back with a needling comment about Master Sol: “She seemed really fond of that one Jedi Master. What was his name again? Sol?” Upon rewatch, this feels like a taunt more than anything. If this is Qimir talking to Mae, that’s the perfect thing to say to fuel her jealousy and anger, which we saw was very triggering in the flashback episode last week. Her attachment to Osha pulls her to the dark because she is so possessive, like Anakin is with Padme. Again, as Palpatine plays up the fear of losing Padme with Anakin, perhaps Qimir is trying to fuel jealousy and take advantage of Mae’s weakness. 

Bah! But the more I watch the scene the more I think it feels more like Osha trying to trick Qimir — only Qimir totally knows that it’s Osha and not Mae and therefore says insulting things that would upset her back. (i.e. “She seemed in over her head, honestly.”) And then when she asks him if he has ever seen the Master’s face, Qimir responds with “You know I haven’t.” That implies that maybe he has already spoken with Mae about this but Osha doesn’t know that.

Then again, the scenes with Osha and Jecki or Sol intercut with the Mae/Qimir walkabout seems so genuinely like her. And she can’t be in two places at once. And so I am left in a conspiratorial tizzy. But how fun would it be that a rewatch of this episodes and maybe even episode two would completely change in meaning and work under a new revelation of what’s really going on. I would love it if the answers were hiding in plain sight. 

5. He’s played by Manny Jacinto. 

According to StarWars.com, Leslye Headland wrote Qimir with actor Manny Jacinto in mind. For one, I don’t think you do that for a minor sidekick character who doesn’t end up being more important in the end. You do that for a major character who is pivotal to the story. And secondly, if you are familiar with Manny Jacinto’s work on The Good Place, you know he is really good at playing a goofy, comedic character who has unexpected depth to him. He never breaks character as Jason Mendoza, the Malatov cocktail-throwing Florida man who appears to have zero self awareness, and yet periodically he surprises all the other characters with his insight. Everyone underestimated him, including the audience. That idiot savant energy is likely what Headland was looking for as she developed Qimir/The Master.

6. Twins are already a thing on this show. 

Wouldn’t the dual persona reveal of The Master nicely echo the duality already present between twins Osha and Mae? It’s only a theme if you have more than one instance of it… I think that makes it much more likely that The Master is someone we already know in the present timeline as opposed to someone coming back to haunt us from the Jedi blunder past of Episode 3. 

Even if I think this case is more compelling than any other, I am prepared to be wrong. There is a distinct possibility that Qimir is a red herring, to lure us into a sense of certainty before the real twist hits. There are two parts of this episode that jump out to me as reasons to pump the breaks on the Jason Mendoza is a Sith Lord train.

1. Kelnacca’s been playing with his spirograph a little too much… 

And it’s Mother Korril. I was delightfully spooked by all the Coven dot paintings all over the Wookiee Jedi’s abode, as if he is being tormented by the Coven in some way. This might, of course, be a “can’t get it out of my mind” therapy situation, but it could also be something outside of Kelnacca’s control. If The Master is Mother Korril, whose body we did not see, then it might make sense that she is messing with Kelnacca without him realizing it. This would also explain why she’s already on Khofar, thus eliminating the need for the convenience of Qimir already being there. The Force flick I mentioned earlier indicates that the dark master isn’t after Osha, or, dare I say, doesn’t want her to get hurt and therefore tosses her away from the fray. The big knock against the Korril theory, of course, is Mae and Osha’s reaction, or lack thereof, to her presence. Wouldn’t they be able to sense that their mother is around?

Image Credit: StarWars.com

2. The other Jedi seem so sure this is “one of their own.” 

And it’s Master Indara. Another big minus in the Mother Korril camp is that the Coven were so vividly presented to us in Episode 3 as different than the Jedi. So a Coven member being The Master would be unlikely because they would have a very different way of manipulating the Force/Thread than with a red lightsaber, for instance. What’s more, Vernestra and the other Jedi standing around the holo of Mae seem convinced that she was trained by a Jedi. They even go so far to ponder if this means a splinter cell has formed.

If this is meant to be a clue, then our list of suspects shifts to Indara and Torbin. And since Carrie Anne Moss is such a big name and the Internet is so distraught that we get so little of her, revealing her as The Master would explain her casting and the promise of her being a major character in the series. The big argument against this theory is that we’ve already seen Indara and Torbin die. Not that fatal wounds are as sticky in Star Wars as in other franchises. (Ahem, Darth Maul, ahem.) Explaining why they didn’t actually die, with only four episodes left, seems like it would be too much of a lengthy digression. 

The fact that I am able to write this much speculation speaks to the primary allure of this show: mysteries that invite wild speculation and deep theorizing. Television history tells us, however, that this is risky business. And I don’t even mean the go-to complaint I have about many of the Marvel Disney+ series that let fans go theory crazy and then go with the simplest answer, heavily foreshadowed. I’ve already seen many complain or conclude that it can’t be Qimir because that would be too obvious. That there has to be another twist. But what if it is Qimir because all the clues point to him? How much would our disappointment in that be on us vs. on the show?

[SPOILER WARNING: Loads of spoilers for Lost, a series that ended 14 years ago.]

The most infamous cautionary tale I can think of as the most helpful case study is Lost, which aired on ABC from 2004-2010. Lost was the type of show, not unlike The Acolyte, whose stock and trade was mystery. It consistently showed the audience cryptic and provocative things, which they would go and over interpret and theorize about. To be fair, I recall that the show invited this. It got the point at which there was a phone number that appeared in the show that you could call to get a “clue.” People started thinking the advertisements during commercial breaks even had clues hidden in them. It was an amazing time because it was one of the first shows that created this communal experience, watching each week and debating about what could be clues and what those clues could mean. And it was all fun and games until the finale. For years during the show’s run, fans had frequently tossed around the “they’ve been dead the whole time” theory. That the whole island was in fact a purgatory for the victims of the plane crash in the first episode. This then eventually turned into a “it better not be” discourse, as fans concluded that such an explanation for everything we saw would be too predictable, too obvious. 

And while there are still critics and fans hotly debating what the finale of Lost actually was trying to show us and, based on particular interpretations, whether or not it was satisfying, the main backlash against the show was that everyone said it better not be purgatory…and then it was. A more nuanced interpretation of events in the final episode disprove this statement to a degree, and I don’t have time to get into what a “flash sideways” is and what the church actually was. But Lost, without a doubt, was a victim of its own mystery mongering. Purgatory theories aside, the series had trained its viewers to look for clues everywhere, and then, without realizing it, gave them “clues” that made them misinterpret what was going on. 

It was the first series to reckon with fan discourse online, which, as we all know, is standard operating procedure today. Years ago, I attended a San Diego Comic Con panel featuring TV writers from various shows, and the one from Lost said that the writers were essentially at the mercy of the fan theories and fan discourse, and that they had never had to work on a show psyched out by that in real time before. I can’t imagine how distraught TV writers of shows that don’t follow the binge model must feel today.

I was not as indignant about the Lost finale as most fans, but I do remember ending the show and thinking, wait, but what about that shark with the weird brand on its fin? Why did that kid have psychic powers? And what was actually the deal with “the numbers”? As much as I loved the show and my experience watching it week to week, I can recognize now that there was an over saturation of ambiguous, cryptic details for the sake of being ambiguous and cryptic rather than cleanly fitting into an explanation of what we were seeing. So, for me, as long as The Acolyte wastes not wants not with clues or narrative anomalies, many of which I’ve written about here, then I won’t so much mind if it’s Qimir, Mother Korril, Indara, or even Yord (calm down, Yord Horde, I don’t think it could be Yord). But we do have to be able to point to everything in the show as clearly leading us towards who was behind that mask all this time. And, please, try not to get mad if it was Qimir all along! [cue WandaVision music]

Image Credit: StarWars.com

P.S. I love you, Bazil! It took so much restraint to not focus this review entirely on you. Keep doing your thing!