By the time The Acolyte ends, Osha has embraced the Dark Side and joined The Stranger. As for Mae, the Jedi-killing former pupil of the mysterious Sith villain, she's turned her back on anger and, following a memory wipe, allied herself with the Jedi and Vernestra Rwoh.
It's quite the contrast to where the series began and, in a lengthy interview with Collider, showrunner Leslye Headland said it was always the goal to turn the tables and have the twins switch places.
"That's also why I really felt that the memory-wipe was important, because I felt like Mae had to become completely docile, and then Osha had to embody this rage and despair," she explains. "So, again, trying to get all of that to work took so much time and effort, and I cannot tell you how proud I am of our writers that they did that and that the actors were so game."
Crucial to Osha, a former Jedi Padawan, turning her back on the Order and Master Sol was learning she'd lied to him about the circumstances surrounding her mother's death.
Explaining that Sol's desire to protect Osha stems from "benign sexism," Headland elaborates on that point by saying, "Ultimately, what happens is — again, this is a father-daughter relationship — as women evolve in their lives and develop their own personalities separate from their fathers, at some point, they have to reject that protectionism."
"When he says, 'I did everything because I love-' He's going to say, 'I love you,' and not only is that a level of attachment that an unbalanced Jedi would have — he very clearly is losing it in the last half of the season — but that's also the justification for that kind of behavior between the father and the daughter."
"The daughter has to surpass him in some way," she continues. "She cannot stay a little girl or an adolescent or young adult. She has to, at some point, say, 'I reject what you have told me I need to do to make you proud, to follow in your footsteps.' She has to do that."
In fact, it's when Sol tells Osha "it's okay" that Headland believes is him accepting his fate and giving his "daughter" agency and "[the] energy to do the final fist clench."
It's during that confrontation we see Osha bleed Sol's lightsaber by turning the blade from blue to red. According to the showrunner, "She takes it from him and claims it as her own. I just couldn’t resist making that three-act structure of it. I'm so proud of it. I wanted it to feel like the lightsaber had its own journey over the course of the season."
Much has been said about the possibility of Mae and Osha - who are supposedly a single consciousness split into two bodies - being a Force Dyad. Rey and Kylo Ren's connection gave them an unbreakable Force-bond, and Headland left the door open to whether that's the case, going to far as to suggest Sol's reading of the situation may be wrong.
"I hope that people end with just not really knowing. I do think it's something worth exploring if we get to continue telling the story, but I also felt strongly that I shouldn't namedrop Force Dyad, because it felt a little inside baseball for a regular viewer."
"Here's what I'll say. I think that there's a world where Sol just doesn't have the vocabulary or information to express what he's looking at. He may have misread what he saw," she says. "After everything he's done, I'm not sure he's a reliable narrator at this point, you know? So I was interested in keeping it vague enough that you could explore it on your own."
There's a lot which needs to be addressed in The Acolyte if it gets a second season, but if the Star Wars sequels taught us anything, it's that Lucasfilm has no problem with leaving us without definitive answers.
All episodes of The Acolyte are now streaming on Disney+.