The following post contains SPOILERS for Star Wars: The Acolyte Episode 5.
The last episode of The Acolyte answered the show’s biggest question thus far – namely the mysterious identity of Mae’s Sith Master. (It was Qimir! The guy who seemed like the obvious red herring was… actually just the bad guy all along?! Huh.)
But the new Acolyte The episode also raised some new questions along the way. Especially viewers are intrigued by a recurring element of “Night”: the fact that Jedi lightsabers keep failing and malfunctioning during the battle with the Sith.
This is something that has almost never happened in the more than 40 years of history of Star Wars before. Lightsabers are reliable weapons. Unless someone cuts the cable in half, they seemingly run forever with few problems. They don’t get stuck. They don’t run out of ammunition. But in this battle, the Jedi continue to struggle to make their weapons work. (And then they, uh, all die. Spoilers.)
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The Acolyte doesn’t explain this detail; or at least this episode didn’t explain it. To understand what’s going on here, you need to have read Star Wars novels or comics.
Although the Sith Master doesn’t waste time talking about it (which, fair enough, he’s in the middle of a fight with half a dozen Jedi, he’s a little distracted), his distinctive helmet and some of his suit’s armor are made from a Special Star Wars metal called “cortosis.” The substance first appeared in the first Star Wars novel from the current canon of the franchise, the Rebels prequel book A new dawn by John Jackson Miller.
According to Wookiepedia…
Cortosis was a metal that had a very high energy absorption rate and transmission coefficients, which allowed even the energy of a blaster bolt to be dissipated upon contact. One of the strongest minerals in the galaxy, cortosis could even withstand the blow of a lightsaber and briefly short-circuit its blade.
Essentially, cortosis is a metal even more powerful than beskar, the ultra-hard substance that Mandalorians use to forge their armor, which makes them immune to laser blasts. Not only is Cortosis resistant to lightsabers, but it also causes them to backfire for a short period, which is exactly what we see happen to the Jedi in The Acolyte.
It would have been nice if there was some kind of more detailed explanation for those who didn’t read it Star Wars books. (Probably one will come in a future episode?) It might also have been helpful if this big fight scene hadn’t taken place in a dense forest in the middle of the night, making it very difficult to see the intricacies of what was going on. Some of the action, especially when there were all the Jedi and Sith fighting at once, was quite difficult to follow, making it even more confusing than it needed to be. But now we know.
New episodes of The Acolyte premiere Tuesday nights on Disney+. Sign up for Disney+ here.
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