After what was a rather meandering and dull episode, culminating with Mae's abrupt change of heart and Kelnacca's off-screen death, followed by a cliffhanger ending, at least they jump right into the action and keep the pedal to the metal for most of the fifth episode. There’s plenty of cool lightsaber fighting, and the "Sith" is sufficiently menacing. I personally don’t like when EU comics and games insist on giving the Sith helmets just to call back to Vader. Vader wore his helmet to stay alive, not to look badass. So I was happy we got an explanation beyond the desire to hide his identity—specifically, he tells Sol that he doesn't want him to read his mind. It's at least an extra reason.
Some of the acting and direction, or perhaps a combination of both, deserve criticism. It comes across as rather pedestrian, and multiple times the flow of the episode is interrupted by wooden deliveries of obvious lines.
The revelation that the Sith is actually Qimir was a surprise for me only because I thought it was too obvious. They hinted multiple times in previous episodes that it could be him, right down to Qimir correcting himself when referring to their master in the first person. It seemed so clear that I assumed it was a red herring.
He’s a bit mustache-twirly, but whatever. I liked that Sol let loose and almost beat him because the Jedi were starting to look like punks. There’s a balance between making your antagonist seem dangerous and making the good guys look too weak, so Sol almost killing him was good. He’s still the best thing about this show.
The Umbramoths carrying Qimir off was pretty amusing, but no sillier than anything else in Star Wars.
The biggest problem I still have is that I just don’t buy into Osha or Mae. Mae's abrupt change of heart in episode 4 was badly handled, and their confrontation at the end of episode 5 was unconvincing and poorly acted. Despite spending all of episode 3 exploring their past, I still feel they are undeveloped as characters, and I don’t buy into their motivations.
Then there’s the switcharoo, which I should have seen coming at some point since they’re twins, so how could they not? But am I supposed to believe that Sol doesn’t realize it’s not Osha? OK, he’s just been through a fight to the death; I’ll give him a minute to shake off the cobwebs, but come on. He’s a Jedi Master. High-powered perception is literally one of his superpowers.
