No one has ever accused Star Wars lore of being clean or simple. But even in the mess of post-Disney canon and oft-ignored Legends, there are still pockets of absolute silliness that are allowed to play a significant role in the story. And now, with the latest installment of The Acolyte has focused on two of those things: vergences and midi-chlorians.
(Editorial note: This story contains spoilers for episode 7 of The Acolyte.)
Virtually every Star Wars fan, from the avid book reader to the most casual movie watcher, is familiar with midi-chlorians in one way or another. First infamously mentioned by Qui-Gon Jinn in The Ghost Threatthey are a physical, living measure of sensitivity to the Force that can be measured with a simple Jedi blood test.
It’s a piece of lore that has been ridiculed and rejected by fans since 1999, and for good reason. It’s disappointing to hear that the mystery and magic of the Force has been reduced to a matter of simple genetics. In fact, midi-chlorians have been criticized so harshly that when The Acolyte chooses to bring them up for plot purposes, the writers refuse to even use their full names, instead using the ridiculous-sounding “M-count” for short. Despite all that, vergences, the other plot-important bit of lore from this episode, are even more ridiculous than the oft-derided Force-giving life forms.
Image: Lucasfilm
Vergences were also introduced in The ghost threat, Also by Qui-Gon during a conversation with Mace Windu. He didn’t go into much detail about it at the time, but since that film we’ve learned that vergences are typically places with an unusually high concentration of the Force. They’re more descriptively known as nexus points for the Force, and canonically include things like the cave on Dagobah where Luke confronts Vader. Another example is the mirror cave that Rey visits on Ahch-To. But that’s not all that vergences are, and this is where it starts to get ridiculous.
Based on the variety of uses in canon, vergences can be almost anything. When first mentioned, Qui-Gon explains that Anakin himself is a vergence, which is part of the reason he believes the child could be the chosen one. In another instance, the Skywalker family lightsaber becomes a vergence when Rey touches it in The Power Awakens. Why does this happen? Who knows! Vegences are a mystery. That’s all well and good when they’re mostly relegated to a flavorful bit of contextual lore surrounding some of the most important events in Star Wars. But when they become important, things get messy.
Image: Lucasfilm
And that brings us back to episode 7 of The Acolyte. While all this vagueness can be great for helping us understand key places and moments in the Star Wars canon, it’s a terrible tool to use in an ongoing story. Despite that fact, The AcolyteThe big reveal is that the coven cult of witches on the planet Brendock actually built their temple around a vergence. Not only that, but they appear to have used that vergence to create artificial life, which they then split into the two extremely Force-sensitive (high M-count) children Osha and Mae — who are apparently one person trapped in two bodies.
This would be an extremely complicated revelation no matter what Star Wars lore it is tied together. But trying to explain it all using the vagaries of a rarely used piece of lore that is inherently mysterious is downright baffling. Furthermore, exactly how the coven created Osha and Mae and what it means for them to be separated into two different bodies remains a complete mystery. Worst of all, it’s possible that none of this is exactly what the show is trying to reveal, which would honestly be the worst-case scenario of all.
All of this muddies the waters for what should have been the show’s triumphant finale: It set up an over-the-top cliffhanger in episode 3 so we could see what happened. So why doesn’t it feel like we know what happened?