Osha (Amandla Stenberg) in Disney’s The Acolyte
Disney’s surprise cancelation of The Acolyte sparked confusion and disappointment among the show’s fanbase, with some fans campaigning for a second season of the Star Wars series.
The unfinished series left several questions unanswered in its season finale, and teased something of a forbidden romance between Osha (Amandla Stenberg) and Qimir (Manny Jacinto), two former Jedi who found themselves drawn to the Dark Side.
The Star Wars franchise is largely devoid of sex appeal and romance, and rarely explores the Dark Side from the perspective of the villains, so the cancelation of the series was seen as a dead end for a galaxy far, far away.
Why Was ‘The Acolyte’ Canceled?
Media outlets and fans have pointed to disappointing viewership numbers for The Acolyte’s season finale, along with the show’s hefty budget of $180 million, as the likely explanation for Disney refusing to renew the series.
Others noted that the series often made its way into the Nielsen top 10, and just needed more time to cultivate a large audience.
The Acolyte also served as a battleground for the fading embers of the culture war, with reactionary YouTube critics claiming to despise the show, as though they were being forced to watch each episode at gunpoint.
Despite being a fun, action-packed show boasting a diverse cast, much of the online discourse surrounding The Acolyte was fiercely negative, thanks to disgruntled fans and reactionary YouTube critics who still complain about the perceived sins of The Last Jedi, a group who seem determined to smother new Star Wars stories before they can begin to take root in pop culture.
The Acolyte was constantly review-bombed by angry fans, with some even targeting the wrong “Acolyte.”
Without fresh stories and new characters, Star Wars seems doomed to stagnate; there’s only so many times that the CGI corpse of Luke Skywalker can be resurrected for nostalgia’s sake.
Whether you enjoyed The Acolyte or not, it’s not a good sign that a fresh direction for an aging franchise was canceled so readily—Star Wars desperately needs new stories.
Why Are ‘Star Wars’ Fans Disappointed By The Cancelation Of ‘The Acolyte’?
The Acolyte was admittedly flawed, like the vast majority of the Disney+ Star Wars spin-offs, but showed a lot of potential, and appeared to be drawing in a new audience.
Andor is still the shining jewel of Disney’s Star Wars, boasting razor-sharp writing and stellar performances, but The Acolyte had interesting ideas, a fresh cast of characters and some intriguing worldbuilding.
Set a century before the prequel trilogy, The Acolyte appeared to be moving away from Skywalker-branded nostalgia-bait and into a new direction, while still retaining familiar Star Wars tropes, such as Force-sensitive twins, the hubris of the Jedi, and the allure of the Dark Side.
The series didn’t have the visibility boost of legacy characters that other Star Wars stories have enjoyed—The Book of Boba Fett and Kenobi starred characters from the original trilogy that fans already know and love.
Even The Mandalorian, the big success story of Disney’s Star Wars, modeled its two protagonists after legacy characters—there’s a reason the internet still refers to Grogu as “Baby Yoda.”
The Acolyte seemed to be moving away from the small circle of characters surrounding the Skywalker family (although, Yoda did make a brief appearance in the season finale).
The series was also set to explore the mystery of Darth Plagueis, who was mentioned in the prequel trilogy, through the eyes of Osha and Qimir.
The two shared great chemistry and an intriguing dynamic; Qimir was one of the few antagonists who seemed to be having fun, probably the most compelling villain the franchise has seen in years, while Osha appeared deeply conflicted, likely to question her master’s Dark Side teachings, somewhere down the line.
There was plenty of potential conflict and weird Star Wars lore, such as the creation of the twins, that is now left unexplored.
As fans pointed out, many of the most popular shows on television took time to cultivate an audience and find their voice; juggernauts like Friends, The Office and Game of Thrones were given the chance to grow.
Why should fans bother giving any new Star Wars stories a chance, knowing that Disney might cancel them on a whim?
If allowed to continue, The Acolyte could have proved a popular new series for Disney, or it might have faded from the discourse—now we’ll never know.
