The Acolyte Just Brought The Barash Vow Into Live-Action Star Wars – But What Is That?

There will be spoilers for the first and second episodes of "Star Wars: The Acolyte," so beware.

In "Star Wars: The Acolyte", Mae (Amandla Stenberg), the mysterious dark side wielding assassin who is killing Jedi, confronts Master Torbin (Dean-Charles Chapman) in a remote Jedi Outpost. Torbin, we learn, hasn't spoken to anyone in more than a decade and has taken the Barash Vow, so he floats in silent meditation, embracing nothing but the Force. Mae tries to attack him, but the bubble of the Force that keeps him levitating also keeps out her most vicious attacks, so Mae is forced to come up with another way to deal with her intended assassination of the Jedi she so desperately needs to complete.

Eventually, she's able to overcome his meditation — not because she can penetrate his bubble of the Force, but because she offers him something he wants: absolution.

Torbin wakes up and apologizes to Mae, willingly drinking a green poison she's offered him and deepening the mystery of what could have happened between Mae and the Jedi. Why would Torbin even consider taking the Barash Vow, let alone willingly kill himself with poison?

To answer that, we need to understand what the Barash Vow is.

The Barash Vow is something that was first mentioned in Charles Soule's run of the Marvel Comics "Darth Vader" series. It was a penance that a Jedi took, where they would disconnect from all of their duties and even life in the Jedi order in order to connect solely to the Force. In many instances, it was for Jedi who felt they had done something wrong.

"Darth Vader #2" is set very shortly after the events of "Revenge of the Sith," where the villain is sent to find a kyber crystal for his new Sith lightsaber. To that end, he seeks information on any Jedi that might have taken the Barash Vow and may still be out in the universe. This brings him to a Jedi named Kirak Infil'a, whose purpose in the Jedi was to fight. He had taken the Barash Vow and began a pilgrimage before Anakin Skywalker had even entered the Jedi Order. This brings Vader to confront Infil'a on the river moon of Al'doleem. He's meditating and floating in mid-air, much the same way Torbin is in "The Acolyte."

Ultimately, Vader is able to subdue him, take his lightsaber and forge his own red-bladed saber from its bled kyber crystal.

The vow itself was named after a Jedi named Barash Silvain, the self-declared sister of the Blade of Bardotta, Jedi Porter Engle. She was the first to take the vow and became its namesake, and more than 14,000 other Jedi would proceed to follow in her footsteps over the last few hundred years of the Jedi. According to Kristin Baver's book, "Skywalker: A Family at War," even Obi-Wan Kenobi took on aspects of the vow as he spent time exiled on Tatooine. Naturally, things changed when he received a distress call about the kidnapping of young Leia Organa.

"We thought we were doing the right thing," Master Torbin tells Mae, as he drinks the poison that came from her home planet.

This is the clue we need to understand that whatever tragedy happened to Mae and Osha during their time on the planet Brendok was awful, and the Jedi were likely responsible. Since it happened 16 years in the past, it's reasonable to assume that Torbin tried to overcome his guilt for his mysterious transgressions, and after five or six years, he decided to take the Barash Vow and dedicate himself to forgiveness that he would never find... at least not until Mae entered his meditation chamber and offered it to him herself.

It makes sense that he would take the Barash Vow, and that the crimes he felt himself guilty of were serious enough to take his own life when that dedication to the Force didn't make his guilt subside. Drinking the poison with little reluctance, Torbin died quickly, leaving few clues for the Jedi investigation team, led by Master Sol (Lee Jung-jae), to find.

Now, we're left wondering what exactly would have driven Torbin to this point, but surely we'll find out in the coming weeks.

The first two episodes of "Star Wars: The Acolyte" are available now on Disney+, and new episodes will premiere on Tuesday nights at 9:00pm ET.