Star Wars has lengthy been a little in love with itself, for higher or worse—acquainted faces and locales exhibiting up time and again, nods to acquainted occasions, and naturally, strains that grow to be one thing akin to catchphrases. And whereas The Acolyte is each a sequence that charts quite a lot of new floor for Star Wars on-screen, it’s additionally one which couldn’t assist take pleasure in a bit of that self love for just a few moments, both.
Whereas it’s unsurprising on this setting—a few hundred years earlier than the occasions of The Phantom Menace—Jedi nonetheless half methods with a “Could the Pressure be with you,” The Acolyte’s two-part premiere additionally harkens again to a different acquainted Star Wars line in a extra referential method. In the course of the second episode, whereas our group of heroic Jedi are one a stakeout ready to cross paths with Amandla Stenberg’s mysterious murderer, Mae, Jedi Knight Yord Fandar, watching from afar with a pair of macrobinoculars, will get to drop the one factor we’d sort of anticipate a Star Wars character to say on this scenario: “I’ve acquired a nasty feeling about this,” he murmurs, like so many characters earlier than him.
“That was arduous to get that in,” showrunner Leslye Headland instructed Entertainment Weekly about attending to drop the road into the present. “I’m going to be trustworthy. I acquired quite a lot of suggestions that I shouldn’t put that in. However I simply really feel like once you get the chance to do Star Wars, you’re simply going to shoot your shot. And ‘I’ve a nasty feeling about this’ is extremely iconic.”
On the one hand, the issues are honest. “I’ve acquired a nasty feeling about this” has grow to be such a catchphrase for Star Wars within the years since Luke Skywalker first uttered the road in A New Hope, that the second it’s uttered in materials at this level it’s at risk of not truly feeling like moment-to-moment dialogue, and as an alternative like a pointed nudge to the viewers to go “look, Star Wars!” that takes them out of the narrative. For a short second, whoever will get to say it, stops being a Star Wars character and as an alternative turns into, metatextually, a personality conscious of Star Wars as we all know it. “Could the Pressure be with you,” a minimum of, works as each an in-universe saying and a Star Wars catchphrase as a result of it’s one thing structured as this quasi-religious liturgy.
However on the opposite, there’s one thing very pointedly humorous in Yord Fandar being the one who will get to have it for The Acolyte, in a manner that feels extra characterful quite than simply wholly referential. If there’s one factor we study Yord in The Acolyte’s first two episodes, it’s that he’s an excellent Jedi—in that he’s strolling round with a stick up his ass and will get very boy-scout-y about guidelines and rules, and being a common stickler for the best way issues must be executed that the Jedi Order has instilled in him. He’s nice! However he’s additionally a sort of annoying dweeb. Having him be the one bristle and complain about the best way Grasp Sol is conducting his investigation and say “I’ve a nasty feeling about this” feels much less like both him actually having a nasty feeling, in that he can sense Mae’s presence or what’s about to occur, and extra like he’s simply whining that issues aren’t being executed by the ebook.
It lets The Acolyte’s explicit allowance for indulgence tread that effective line between pulling you out of the second for a Star Wars nod whereas nonetheless truly moderately sounding like one thing considered one of these characters would say on this explicit state of affairs. That, a minimum of, makes it an indulgence price combating for on this occasion.
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