The Fans Are in Love with ‘The Acolyte’s’ New Sith Lord, New Viewers Are Pouring In

Disney’s new Star Wars project, The Acolyte has been streaming on Disney+ since June 4, 2024, and despite all the controversies and review-bombing, the series is still one of the most talked about shows in the world, as the fans are going crazy over each new episode, especially after several moments in the series broke the canon. But, it seems that the series is getting back on track with Episode 5, which is still the most talked-about piece of television at this moment, and the popularity is mostly due to The Master, whose major break in Episode 5 caused a massive uproar and is seemingly pushing the series into new heights.

We have discussed that The Master becomes a major player in Episode 5, which also reveals his identity, a topic we have also discussed in some of our earlier reports. And while the reveal was not surprising at all, everyone knew who it was, it seems that The Master is attracting more and more fans.

The Master, a powerful Sith Lord and Mae’s master, is one of the major aspects of the series. Many fans have speculated about The Master’s true identity prior to Episode 5, and we also provided you with our own two cents on the matter. In Episode 5, however, the series finally revealed who The Master was and it turned out to be Qimir, which is a move we criticized.

Qimir was an obvious choice because in-universe, no one would think it’s him (although everyone out-of-universe will think exactly that), and as we’ve said if it turned out that Qimir was indeed The Master, the show’s element of surprise would go down the drain immediately, as the biggest mystery will have turned out to be an obvious and completely non-mysterious one. That is why we were hoping that it was not Qimir, but sadly – it turned out that it is.

And yet, despite a lot of criticism and the predictability of the revelation, The Master is suddenly a fan-favorite character, demonstrating a trend often seen among Star Wars fans – they fall in love with the villains. We don’t know why this trend is happening, but we’ve often seen it.

Darth Maul, for example, is still beloved by the fans, and so is Darth Vader, although he has been there long enough for that to water down a bit. We also know that General Grievous was exceptionally popular, and just remember how much love Kylo Ren received. Moff Gideon was also fairly popular, and there was a lot of interest in Snoke as well for a while. Interestingly enough, the only two villains who never received any proper love were Count Dooku and Palpatine, most likely because they were old.

The Master fits the former group, and we cannot but draw comparisons between him and Kylo Ren, which actually explains a lot of why he is so popular. The fans want more of him; they want to see his whole story, and they probably want to “fix” him, just like Kylo Ren was fixed. This is also why many new fans are rushing in to watch The Acolyte, as everyone is actually interested in seeing what the whole story is about.

Going forward, The Master definitely seems like a great moment, and it seems that the wait and the build-up were worth it. At least for now. The Acolyte has raised the bar very, very high and in a very abrupt manner with Episode 5; the first four episodes were not on the same level, and now, the series is soaring. This is great, but it also means that the upcoming episodes will have to maintain at least a similar level of quality, and that is always a problem when you have such a jump, but we support the production, and we sincerely hope that they will deliver!

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