In The Acolyte Episode 6 ‘Teach / Corrupt’, the Star Wars show interrogates the path to becoming a Jedi, Osha is stranded with the Master, and Mae takes her place beside Sol. Spoilers ahead, as we recap the major beats.
At the end of The Acolyte Episode 5, Mae’s Master is finally revealed after an exciting lightsaber fight and a failed reunion between twin sisters Mae and Osha.
The episode concluded with Mae stealing Osha’s clothes and switching places with her. The Stranger/Qimir/Master found Osha unconscious, and Mae did her best good girl impression to get aboard Jedi Master Sol’s ship.
This Freaky Friday twist is where Episode 6 begins, and it’s one of the best episodes of The Acolyte yet.
Osha is trapped with Mae’s Master
We start with Osha waking up on an ‘unknown planet’. Visually, it looks like the planet Luke Skywalker was found on at the end of The Force Awakens, with rocky cliff faces, critters, and crashing waves.
Presumably, this is the location at the end of The Acolyte Episode 1, when we got our first glimpse of The Stranger.
Understandably tense, Osha puts together the pieces – Mae has taken off and left her stranded.
She drinks the water left at her bedside (does The Stranger also provide pillow mints?), and ventures outside the cave.
Osha sees no signs of civilization or life other than some wombat-looking critters having a romantic stroll on the beach. She then spots the Master casually walking along the shore.
Actor Manny Jacinto worked out a lot for this athletic role, so there’s a mandated shirtless scene in The Acolyte Episode 6. He strips by the water’s edge before going skinny dipping.
More importantly, Osha clocks some gnarly, large, scars across his back. They don’t look like typical lightsaber scars, though looks could be deceiving in this case (more on that later).
Sol leaves Khofar with Mae in tow
Meanwhile, Mae has made it aboard Sol’s ship. In it, the Jedi sends an emergency distress signal – code zero – back to Coruscant. It’s glitchy, but he does manage to make contact, though the details of the message are lost to the ether.
While Sol is either too rattled by the recent skirmish or is pretending not to sense Mae’s deception, Bazil is on the case.
As Sol retreats to the ship’s lower deck to grieve his losses, Bazil repairs Osha’s droid, Pip. He puts it on some sort of socket, where Pip stands like an electric toothbrush on its charger.
The Stranger stays unbothered by Osha
Characteristically, Mae has chosen to deceive her way to victory. Osha takes a more head-on approach, stalking the Master’s discarded clothes and picking up his lightsaber.
She’s angry, though, so he senses her presence right away and is not in the least bit concerned. There’s no reason for him to be hostile toward Osha; he’s more interested in forcing her to self-interrogate.
He asks Osha if it feels nice to hold a lightsaber again, before pointing out her bad form (keep those elbows raised, kids).
Osha seems primed to attack but doesn’t. A repeating pattern in The Acolyte Episode 6 is that Osha and Mae can’t help but be curious about the opposite sides’ philosophies, which have been kept from them.
Sol hugs Mae, and the Jedi get his distress call
Back on the ship, an unfocused Sol embraces Mae. She tenses like she hasn’t received physical affection in a long time.
He then says he will tell the High Council “everything”, confirming the obvious: something dark in his past has been kept secret from the higher-ups, probably a mistake on Osha and Mae’s home planet.
On Coruscant, his call comes in. Though it’s in pieces, Master Vernestra and her pupils learn his entire team perished. Instead of reporting this mess, Vernestra again handles the situation “personally”. Clearly, she’s involved in whatever blunder haunts Sol.
The Stranger used to be a Jedi
As Sol licks his wounds, back on the unknown rocky planet The Stranger tells Osha he was a Jedi a “really long time ago.”
This isn’t shocking, given his vendetta against the Order. However, it does thicken the thread connecting past and present, as The Acolyte prepares to reveal how he and Sol know each other.
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Playing into the episode title ‘Teach / Corrupt’, he gives a masterclass in emotional manipulation as he stokes Osha’s insecurities and plants doubts in her mind. He’s being nice but there’s an endgame.
He says discussing the Force through the lens of light and dark sides is just semantics, and criticizes Osha loving people in the Order who can’t reciprocate (Jedi are taught to have no attachments).
The Jedi say the dark side corrupts, while those who practice it believe their strict rules are dehumanizing and unnatural. One side’s teacher is the other’s brainwashing villain.
Bazil and Pip Mortal Kombat
Bazil and Pip, now fixed up, attack Mae on the ship. It goes extremely poorly. To Mae’s credit, she doesn’t cut them down in anger, showing some patience.
Instead, she messes with Pip’s settings so she can use him to help her. Pip now has red lights because bad guys in Star Wars have reddish eyes.
Her deceit begins to feel like it’s on thin ice, though, as her body language starts betraying her: Amandla Stenberg imbues the dark-sided twin with more physical tension than Osha, and she’s visibly frustrated when trying to get information from a vague Sol.
The Stranger provokes Osha
After continuous pushing of her buttons, Osha finally cracks and raises a red lightsaber to the Master’s throat. The final push was her admitting she feels like she “failed” at being a Jedi, instead of the line fed to other people about deciding to stop her training.
Displaying some hypocrisy, the Master says to be free you must “lose everything”. It sounds a lot like the Jedi’s no attachment rule, if you ask us.
He’s open about wanting an Acolyte, and says his goal is to utilize the “power of two”. Osha is the perfect mirror of his previous apprentice, so it makes sense he would seek to replace Mae since she went rogue.
Sol sees Mae for who she is and the Jedi investigate
Whether alerted by Bazil or playing it cool the whole time, Sol finally takes action. He incapacitates Mae, then turns off his ship’s transponder so they can’t be located by the soon-arriving rescue team.
After restraining her, Sol says they’ll save Osha together. Mae, though tied up and still vengeful, doesn’t seem unreachable.
Meanwhile, on Khofar, Vernestra and a padawan investigate the aftermath of Episode 5. The bodies are still there, and they sense some of what happened: someone with great Force capabilities mowed down Sol’s entire troupe.
They have no additional context, though, not knowing about Mae’s Master, so they spitball theories.
One is that Sol might be responsible since only someone with huge amounts of power could have done this. Vernestra isn’t convinced, though.
Then, one of the bat-like creatures that carried The Stranger away in Episode 5 attacks them. Vernestra quickly kills it, using a purple saber that takes the form of a whip.
While unconfirmed, this weapon could be what marked the Master’s back.
The Stranger reveals who scarred him
The Stranger tells Osha his scars were given to him long ago by his Jedi Master as the episode winds down (though we dearly wish they were longer).
He then continues convincing Osha to get in touch with her deep dark feelings and floats the idea of her trying on his helmet. The mask is a modified version of the sensory deprivation helmets younglings use in Jedi training.
The Master’s helmet is made from Cortosis ore, a material that can withstand lightsaber strikes and almost entirely blocks the user’s vision and hearing.
The Chainsaw Man-looking gear sounds like a panic attack inducer, so Osha resists it at first. But soon after, curiosity gets the better of her.
We’re shown the view from inside the helmet, and The Acolyte Episode 6 ends with blackness and the sound of Osha’s heavy breathing.
The Acolyte Episode 7 releases on July 9.
In the meantime, read why The Acolyte’s Sith Lord reveal makes sense or where this all fits in the Star Wars timeline. We’ve also got guides on the Andor Season 2 release date, Tales of the Jedi Season 2, and a full The Acolyte explained breakdown.