Inside Out 2 Review: Pixar Might Need a Hug

Change can often be as painful as it is inevitable. This is a fact of life and a fact that haunts Inside Out 2. The long anticipated sequel arrives nearly a decade after one of Pixar’s finest and most sophisticated films, making good on what previously was left as a looming menace and dark joke […]

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This Star Wars: The Acolyte article contains spoilers.

Although we’re officially three episodes into The Acolyte’s eight-episode run, we’re no closer to figuring out who Mae’s (Amandla Stenberg) Sith master is. Still, that hasn’t stopped the theories from running wild about who’s under the black helmet, including a few fingers already pointed at Charlie Barnett’s Yord as well as Qimir (Manny Jacinto). Yet, the third episode introduces another potential suspect who might be pulling the strings from the shadows while appearing as a benevolent figure when not in Sith guise.

Set entirely in flashback, episode 3 takes the story back to Brendok 16 years before the sisters were reunited in episode 2. We knew from the beginning that something tragic happened to the coven of witches, with both Mae and Osha (played in a dual role by Stenberg) assuming the other had perished. But we learn much more about the tragedy this week and Mae’s hand in the destruction of the coven, which included the presumed deaths of their mothers, Mother Aniseya (Jodie Turner-Smith) and Mother Koril (Margarita Levieva). The episode ends with the twins left as orphans—or at least that’s what the show leads you to believe…

Adding some LGBTQ+ representation to the galaxy far, far away after The Rise of Skywalker’s botched same-sex kiss, we learn that Koril and Aniseya raised the twins as their own daughters. As Aniseya tells Jedi Master Indara (Carrie-Anne Moss) and the rest of her party, there is no father. Throughout the episode, we see Koril and Aniseya butt heads as parents, with Koril saying she carried the twins and Aniseya saying she “created” them while arguing about what to do about Osha’s inclination toward the Jedi Order.

“Create” is the key word here, as it suggests that Osha and Mae were born from immaculate conception, similar to Anakin Skywalker. While the mystery of Anakin’s birth was never addressed in the Prequel Trilogy, Marvel’s Darth Vader comics revealed that Emperor Palpatine used the dark side of the Force to create Anakin. So is some form of Sith magic also behind the birth of Osha and Mae, and if so, is this another clue pointing toward the identity of the Sith Lord now mentoring Mae?

Some fans have been very quick to point out that, while we saw Mother Aniseya perish during the destruction of the coven, we never actually see Mother Koril’s body, suggesting she could have survived—or even been responsible for the incident in the first place. Aside from the fact that Mother Koril already looks like a bad guy because she’s the same horned Zabrak species as the villainous Darth Maul, fans have picked up on her unusual