The Acolyte Proves Disney Knows How Lightsabers Work

The Acolyte episode “Night” features one of the best lightsaber action in the franchise. No, that’s not an exaggeration. The quasi-Sith literally impales two Jedi on his saber simultaneously.

Meanwhile, Dafne Keen’s Jecki Lon gets three-hole-punched like a high school science lab. The fight is brutal. More importantly, The Acolyte makes Lightsabers lethal again. Because that’s been the heart of the complaint since The Force Awakens: Disney Lightsabers don’t kill.

On Obi-Wan Kenobi, Reva, the inquisitor, gets impaled and lives. Same thing with the Grand Inquisitor. Same thing with Sabine in Ahsoka. Same as…well, you get the idea. Now, The Acolyte comes along and completely smashes the wimpy lightsaber trend.

The Acolyte shows lightsabers taking lives like they’re going out of style. And yet, I’d be lying if I called this a course correction. No, if we’re being honest, lightsabers have always been wishy-washy.

The fans like to point to Qui-Gon Jinn’s death as the benchmark for all lightsaber implements. Darth Maul stabbed Qui-Gon, and he died. Therefore, anyone who gets shanked by a laser sword should end up taking a dirt nap. But this line of thinking ignores the real reason why Qui-Gon died while Sabine didn’t. The writers wrote it that way.

For proof of the inconsistency of these weapons, let’s forget The Acolyte for a moment and look at how lightsabers function in The Force Awakens. Initially, Kylo Ren kills Max Von Sydow’s character with a single slash of his lightsaber.

Later, Ren stabs his father, Han Solo, through the heart, killing the aging rogue instantly. So far, the glowing death-rods seem to be pretty lethal, right? Clearly, Disney knew even before The Acolyte that lightsabers were dangerous business.

Uh oh! I spoke too soon. Later, Kylo Ren slashes Finn up the spine, which only causes a minor injury. Meanwhile, Rey swipes her plasma scimitar across Kylo’s face and leaves a shallow cut. That’s two for two, but guess which two injuries the fans focus on?

But that’s just Disney, right? Obi-Wan treats lightsabers like an inconvenience, and The Acolyte treats lightsabers like highly efficient murder batons. Like I said above, wishy-washy.

Except…

It was George Lucas who signed off on Darth Maul coming back from being *checks notes* cleaved in half. Lucas had Ben Kenobi’s saber draw blood in A New Hope before changing his mind in the subsequent films and decreeing that the weapons now cauterize the wounds they inflict. Let’s Compare Luke Skywalker’s fight against Jabba’s thugs in Return of the Jedi with The Acolyte‘s lightsaber massacre.

If Lucas had treated lightsabers like the fans wanted, that scene in ROTJ would have had more limbs flying around the screen than a Mortal Kombat fatality. Jabba’s goons would be full of visible holes like the Jedi in The Acolyte after Smilo Ren pokes his lightsaber through them.

But anyone who’s seen Return of the Jedi knows that most of the lightsaber carnage occurs off-screen. Or worse, Luke swings at someone and they go flying like he hit them with a baseball bat. Next to that scene, The Acolyte would appear to understand lightsabers even better than the man who created them.

Except it doesn’t work that way. The simple truth is that, whether it’s the original trilogy, the prequels, or The Acolyte, lightsabers are lethal when they need to be and not when they don’t. That’s how it works, and that’s how it’s always worked.

Complaining about it is like complaining that the main characters never get hit despite hundreds of Stormtroopers firing blasters at them. Do you want a story, or do you want a documentary? I, for one, would rather have a story. If that means that The Acolyte‘s lightsabers work differently than Return of the Jedi‘s, so be it.

But don’t try to tell me Disney doesn’t understand how lightsabers work. They do, and The Acolyte is proof.