I had a Star Wars: The Acolyte theory that was just vindicated by the latest episode drop, so permit me a moment of explaining. The first two episode titles had a diptych pattern: Lost / Found and Revenge / Justice.
They're ideas that are in tension with each other, or complementary in some way, which all pairs well thematically in a show revolving around twins. Cool, I thought. But then episode 3 dropped that naming convention ("Destiny") and episode 4 did too ("Day"). Huh.
I thought it was strange to have such a strong, peculiar naming convention for titles, and then to suddenly drop it. But then I was listening to the AMCA podcast about the first half of the Acolyte, and they were talking about how episode 4 cuts off in a strange way.
So they looked it up and found that episodes 4 and 5 were written together, and speculated that they were probably shot together. Similarly, episodes 3 and 7 were written together, so they speculated they'll both be flashbacks.
Now go back to the episode titles. What if they didn't DROP the diptych naming convention, but rather, these episodes that were written together as one part of the story were just different halves?
Well, if that's the case, I thought, then episode 5 would be a title pairing with Day, probably Night. So together, that single "episode" would be called "Day / Night." The episode just dropped, and sure enough.
So if this is the case, they actually *haven't* dropped the diptych naming convention. They just split a couple of the stories in two. Episode 7 would be the other half of the diptych started by the episode called "Destiny," so maybe "Free Will" or shorthanded to just "Will," for example.
