The Acolyte: Osha's "dark side cave" test and what she brings with her

It was Q&A time on Disney+'s newest television series, The Acolyte. On the "Unknown Planet," as the captions describe Qimir's home, Osha finds herself in unexpectedly open dialogue with the man who murdered her friends and enthralled her sister. In a conversation late in the episode, she dares to ask about the cortosis helmet that has led many fans to describe him as Darth Teeth. After he likens it to a sensory deprivation headpiece, she guesses that it blocks out all senses. "So it's just you and the Force," Qimir clarifies. "And what you bring with you."

This calls back very clearly to a moment in another Jedi's journey. In The Empire Strikes Back, the middle installment in the original Star Wars trilogy, training on Dagobah under Master Yoda, Luke comes to a cave that Yoda describes as "strong in the dark side" and "a domain of evil." Asked what's in there, Yoda avoids Luke's gaze and says, "Only what you take with you." The young Jedi is told he will not need his weapons, but he ignores that advice and is fully armed when he comes face-to-face with a vision of Darth Vader. He strikes and beheads the figure, only to find his own face staring back at him when the mask cracks open.

In Kevin J. Anderson's Champions of the Force, a Jedi atoning for his crimes faces a similar test when he is led into the jungles of Yavin 4 by Luke Skywalker himself. In this version of the cave test, he refuses to strike a foe down. The specter in that cave test is the brother he accidentally killed, and it is a moment of absolution instead of the "failure at the cave" that Yoda pointed out to Luke on Dagobah.

The episode ends with Osha and the Force as she takes a breath inside the cortosis helmet. We don't know what she will see in this state or if Qimir was telling the truth about the experience. It's true that, while wearing the helmet, he did not notice Osha in episode 5, "Night," until she attacked him, but that could be a matter of focus, not deprivation.

Moreover, we have seen Osha's guilt over having failed as a Jedi and perceiving that the Jedi threw her away. Will the Force that she communes with in the helmet call her towards the light that she has tried to serve or feed the darkness in herself that she has not yet reckoned with?

We'll have to wait and see to find out.