It was one of the most controversial Star Wars projects of all time, which is certainly saying something, and now there will be nothing more to debate, it seems. Deadline is reporting that The Acolyte has been cancelled and will not see a second season, something that’s been hazy since the series ended.
The Acolyte became the center of a Star Wars culture war surrounding its casting diversity, “woke” nature and supposed writing flaws that “broke canon,” each episode bringing some new controversy. It was one of the most review-bombed series in probably Disney or Marvel history on Disney+, with an 18% audience score and a good, not great, 78% critic score.
Though the anti-Acolyte crowd will no doubt celebrate this as some great victory like Ewoks playing bongos on dead Stormtrooper helmets, the reality here is that this show probably did not have a chance.
It had a massive, stupidly massive, reported $180 million budget for the eight episode series, when at least that much money was in no way ever seen on screen. And when you spend that much, you want some sort of huge viewership to match.
The Acolyte did not have that. While there’s no official data from Disney, estimates put its audience as smaller than every other Star Wars series and half of something like Ahsoka, at best. Some would just say this is because the show is “bad,” but it had an absolutely mountain to climb being a series set in the totally unexplored (in live action) High Republic which takes place centuries before the Skywalker saga and seemingly had no connection to it (by the end, it had a little).
It was creating an entirely original story with brand new characters and mere seconds of a few well-placed cameos from Yoda to Darth Plagueis by the finale. It left many mysteries unsolved including Plagueis’ involvement in all this, the true nature of the split-consciousness twins and further development of characters like Osha and The Stranger, the latter of which was easily the best thing about the series and one of the best new villains in the Disney era. He’ll probably never been seen again, unless he and his castmates finish things up in some novel or comic. I could see that happening, in theory.
I don’t think The Acolyte had a chance as soon as it spent that $180 million. A show with zero Star Wars icons or connections to the OG series should never have expected huge viewership. Andor also had viewership problems but it was of course a straight line to Rogue One and A New Hope. And yes, it being a level of good past essentially anything else Disney had ever released probably inspired at least a second concluding season. The Acolyte may have been good in parts, but no, it’s not anywhere close to Andor-good.
This fate was already written and it would have taken a miracle to avoid it. I will not miss the internet firestorm that occurred every week about the series which made its good bits almost impossible to enjoy, but all this says to me is that Disney is going to experiment a lot less. When really the takeaway should be that they need to spend a lot less.
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