Wookieepedia, the most popular Star Wars wiki, appears to have entered an unexpected moment of crisis. It’s impossible to overstate how important Wookieepedia, the fan-run Wiki, is to the Star Wars fandom. It’s one of the largest Fandom sites in existence, with 193,050 pages and counting, and the site has even been frequented by actors and writers as well as general fans.
There’s probably no better online resource when it comes to Star Wars, with Wookieepedia guiding viewers seamlessly through Legends and canon information. Even more impressively, over the last few years, the “Wook” (as it is often called) has become an important part of the online fan community in its own right. Unfortunately, over the last week, the Wook has found itself at the heart of a major controversy.
Leslye Headland’s The Acolyte has proved to be one of Lucasfilm’s most controversial releases to date, with an online backlash and a pretty transparent review-bombing campaign. One of the strangest controversies was over the age of Jedi Master Ki-Adi-Mundi, a character who makes a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo in The Acolyte episode 4. This appearance contradicted a 1999 CD-ROM and a 2013 trading card, both of which established that Ki-Adi-Mundi shouldn’t have been born yet. Neither are actually canon, and Lucas himself contradicted the CD-ROM later in the prequel trilogy when he changed Ki-Adi-Mundi’s lightsaber color.
Ki-Adi-Mundi’s age became an unlikely flashpoint, especially when the canon page on Ki-Adi-Mundi was edited on Wookieepedia to reflect his appearance in The Acolyte. This resulted in death threat messages against the editor, and these were publicly shared by Jordan Wilson - then a key member of the Social Media Team and administrator of the Wook. Wilson had not been given permission to make these public, however, and has since acknowledged that doing so was a mistake. This seems to be the inciting incident for a major change at Wookieepedia.
I can understand why people decided after the third episode that the show was bad, but I think that reaction was short-sighted and impatient.
A lot of the reviews decrying the third episode completely miss what I thought was very obvious in that episode: we were seeing the events through a single perspective, that of a child who is missing a significant amount of context. The “plot holes” are on purpose, to make the audience say, “Nah, that doesn’t add up.” Because it doesn’t.
Sure enough, in episode 7 we see the same events from more perspectives and, surprise, it makes a lot more sense. We get to see through the lies of the Jedi.
I’m not trying to say The Acolyte is perfect, but it’s a damn sight better than 3/10 or whatever IMDB has it as right now. And it brought a lot of cool stuff from Legends onto the screen.
I enjoyed the ride. The easter eggs were fun, the fight choreography was as solid, and Manny Jacinto is amazing.
I understand, and I definitely don’t fault anyone who likes the show or stuck through it. I just feel like too many shows I’ve been watching lately hasn’t been worth the slog to get through, and it’s been killing my excitement for franchises.
For example I haven’t watched house of the dragon because game of thrones rushed ending, Picard season 3 because of season 2, and I fell off the marvel train after Wanda vision, falcon and winter soldier, and she hulks endings, all shows that either ending in nothing burgers or wtf I guess we need to end somehow.
I feel this. I also haven’t bothered with House of the Dragon. Or the LotR show.
House of the Dragon is definitely a good show, also, completely different show runners than GOT. The overall arc, AFAIK, is also already written it’s part of GRRM’s history of the world, they’re only filling in details. LotR is forgettable slop without grander rhyme or reason in favour of moment-to-moment engagement.