*Here there be spoilers.*
I’ve been rewatching all the live-action Star Wars stuff in in-universe chronological order (Andor season 1 my beloved!), and I wanted to talk some more about The Acolyte, looking at the pivotal revisiting of the Brendok flashback in “Choice.”
In this episode, I can't say enough about how much I like the specific way everything falls apart. Like many, I'd been waiting for the other shoe to drop on what the Jedi really did on Brendok, but I was expecting an institutional conflict, the Order bringing their weight down on the coven, with horrible bloodshed as a result. Once the dust settled, the Council's reaction might have ranged anywhere from, "This is a stain on our conscience—it didn't have to be this way," to, "They should not have meddled in the Force in dangerous ways." Regardless, I expected the fight to come from the top down, with the individual Jedi on the ground somewhat caught in the middle, acting at the behest of the Council despite whatever misgivings they might have.
Instead, it's the Council who says, "You've interfered enough, get back to your survey work for the good of everyone involved," and the ultimate clash is less about ideology/institutions and more about individual fears, mistakes, and misunderstandings. Not that the institutional thinking of the Order plays no role—we see it come out in Sol's automatic assumption that this unknown culture is a dangerous one and Indara's assertion that testing children is their right. But I find it so interesting that this is led so much by individual flaws and screw-ups.
Sol gets so caught up in his attachment to Osha that he makes increasingly reckless decisions, distrusting the witches more and more based on his gut rather than any hard evidence or genuine guidance from the Force. Torbin is understandably restless and homesick, but those feelings make him vulnerable to being taken over by Mother Aniseya, which just unbalances him even more. He too starts acting even more rashly. Even Indara, the main voice of reason in the group, makes important miscalculations. Being less forthcoming with Torbin might be her teaching style, but in this case, it ignores how genuinely distressed he is until, again, those mental pressure points are used against him by the coven. And in her determination to free Kelnacca from the witches' control, she underestimates what that will do to them.
And for all that, the coven makes significant mistakes too. Mother Aniseya possess Torbin to demonstrate their power, trying to get the Jedi to leave them alone, but that comes back to bite them when he tries to take the girls in his desperation to leave. Mother Koril is more than ready to fight, and she's the one who tells Mae to tap into her power by getting angry. Lighting Osha's Jedi booklet on fire is a heated, reckless act on Mae's part, but even though she almost immediately regrets it, the fire quickly spirals out of control.
The whole episode is about people who are variously afraid, angry, and obsessed. They let those feelings guide them, and their distrust of the opposing group continually leads them to take an action that makes the situation worse. By and large, they're not behaving rationally, and like Mae with the fire, many of them recognize their errors within seconds of making them, but being sorry can't fix the damage that's already been done.
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