Why ‘The Acolyte’ Missed the Opportunity to Serve as a Prequel to ‘The Phantom Menace’

‘Star Wars: The Acolyte’ last week released its final episode. The show has been one of the most controversial in the history of the franchise. What initially started as review-bombing unfairly targeted toward the show for being “woke,” quickly turned into a legit criticism.

We’ve already covered some subjective opinions on why ‘The Acolyte’ is far from being the best show in the franchise, and most of those reasons focus on pacing, acting, dialogue, and some weird takes that were presented over the course of eight episodes.

But, we can freely add one more thing to the list of “regrets” as the show failed to connect to ‘The Phantom Menace’ in any significant way except for the fact that the show had a brief cameo of Ki-Adi-Mundi, one that stirred remarkable amounts of controversy.

The show doesn’t connect to the prequel trilogy in any way, except for taking a different look at Anakin’s origin story and presenting Osha and Mae as sort of prototype chosen ones.

The show takes place 100 years before ‘The Phantom Menace’ but does little to explain some things we’ve seen over the course of the movie.

The show failed to fully address why the Jedi believed the Sith were extinct before Darth Maul’s appearance in ‘The Phantom Menace,’ despite dark threats being sensed by masters like Vernestra Rwoh, and obvious signs all over the Galaxy that there are rogue Force users all around them.

Despite Headland teasing that the show will take a good look at the Rule of Two, nothing like that happened over the course of the episodes, meaning that it’s strange how the Jedi were aware that such a rule even existed during the movie.

You can always argue that that’s what the second season of the show is for, but keep in mind that Healand revealed recently that she threw basically everything in the first season of the show, and it was always imagined to end the storyline of ‘The Acolyte.’ Sure the opportunities and discussion and potential plans for subsequent seasons existed, but there weren’t any guarantees for a second season.

What do you think? Let us know in the comments below!

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