Sadly, The Acolyte has been canceled by Disney+ after just one season. The Acolyte was the first Star Wars series to have a female showrunner, Leslye Headland, and when it debuted, it had the highest opening day viewership for a Disney+ show in 2024. Taking place around 100 years before the events in the original Skywalker saga movies, it starred Amandla Stenberg, Manny Jacinto, Lee Jung-jae, Charlie Barnett, Carrie-Ann Moss, and Rebecca Henderson. Despite its strong start and good critic reviews, viewership for The Acolyte dropped after its third week.
Unfortunately, because of its queer female showrunner, diverse cast, and daringness to tell a new story, The Acolyte was frequently attacked by the toxic fanboys who need to stop thinking a Star Wars property is only created for them.. These douchebags organized a review bomb campaign on Rotten Tomatoes, went after a female editor on the online website Wookiepedia, and aimed racist attacks at Stenberg. It looks like these a-holes have once again gotten their way because we’ll never get a chance to find out Jacinto’s Qimir’s backstory or what happened in the Ghost of Jedi Past.
The news is not entirely surprising. The Acolyte did OK with critics, with 78% on Rotten Tomatoes, but divided Star Wars fans, which was reflected in its overall viewership. Driven by interest into the venerable space franchise, The Acolyte got off to a strong start when it launched June 4 with two episodes, generating 4.8M views in its first day on the streamer to rank as the biggest series premiere on Disney+ this year. The tally rose to 11.1 million views globally after five days of streaming. Corroborating Disney’s data, the series made its debut on Nielsen’s Top 10 originals chart in its premiere week at No. 7 (488 million minutes viewed), climbing to No. 6 the following week.
But The Acolyte could not sustain the momentum, dropping out of the Top 10 in Week 3 and staying off before returning at No. 10 after the release of the finale (335M minutes, believed to be the lowest for a Star Wars series finale). Like fellow global streamers Netflix and Prime Video, Disney+ has a high viewership threshold for renewing high-end, big-budget series that cost well above $100M per season to make.
In interviews, Headland has revealed that she had pitched her ideas for a second season, sharing her hopes for a renewal. Lucasfilm’s first — and most successful to date — Disney+ series, The Mandalorian, is carrying on, crossing over to features with the upcoming The Mandalorian & Grogu. Ahsoka, the company’s series that proceeded The Acolyte, has been renewed for a second season.
The Acolyte was a mystery-thriller that took viewers into a galaxy of shadowy secrets and emerging dark-side powers in the final days of the High Republic era. A former Padawan reunites with her Jedi Master to investigate a series of crimes, but the forces they confront are more sinister than they ever anticipated.
I’m pretty bummed out about this news. I refuse to link to it, but one mouthy YouTube account in particular has been gloating hard about taking down the “woke” Star Wars, ugh. F-ck them. I know that beyond the toxic fanboys, there were mixed reviews from fans, but most of those complaints were about the pacing in the earlier eps and that Osha and Mae weren’t as compelling as other characters. I’ll grant that like most Star Wars series, The Acolyte started off slowly, but it really picked up midway and ended strongly. The Clone Wars sucked its first season, but it got a chance to grow into one of the best Star Wars properties out there. And not that it matters, but just to pad my argument, other examples of TV shows with bad first seasons that were given a chance are the US version of The Office and Parks and Recreation. And yes, yes, I know a Star Wars series is a lot more expensive to make, but they’ve got Disney money.
Anyway, I’m just really disappointed. I was excited to see where the story would go from there, especially with the Osha/Qimir pairing and the reveal of Darth Plagueis. My main gripe here is that when it came down to it, Disney just pulled the plug on one of the more interesting Star Wars shows they’ve had since Andor rather than giving it a chance to really grow and flourish. And since Disney and Lucasfilm has a history of listening to its louder, more toxic members, it really does feel like they’re once again catering to them, which is a shame. It may please a specific group of fans, but it will only hurt them in the long run.
My husband and I watched the whole show and loved it I told him yesterday it was canceled and he immediately said stupid Star Wars fan boys.
I will say though we didn’t love the third episode and almost stopped watching after it. When they went into the past we felt it killed the momentum of the first two episodes and also didn’t love the child actress for the girls. I had to convince him to continue and then after Darth Teeth showed up we were hooked.
I think they had some issues with pacing and needed to start pulling on certain threads sooner but overall it was a good show. I’m sad it won’t be back.
I’m a sort of SW fan (I mainly watch the movies and almost never the TV shows) but I wanted to like this one to counteract the silly reviews.
To be honest, stopped watching after 2 episodes, it wasn’t that good at all.
Yeah, the fan boys did a number on this show which is sad as that it got better after ep 4. There were issues with the script and pacing, overall it could have been 6 eps instead of 8. It tried to be clever with all the sub plots.
Its a shame as I was really interested in the Qimir and Vernestra sub plot. I also thought it was a bad move to kill off Jecki and Frod, who as characters had a lot of potential.
The show had a LOT of potential but the toxic fan boys got their way.
we watched the first two episodes and liked them but weren’t hooked, and lost interest after the third. now that i know its canceled I likely wont go back and try to watch again.
I love the Star Wars movies (including about half of the Last Jedi, but the other half….I just read while thats on, lol.) but I’m meh on a lot of the series. I think they have just so oversaturated the market that even big SW fans like myself are burnt out somewhat.
all that said…..I’m surprised but not shocked with how Disney continues to cater to the toxic SW fandom. Tell a good, interesting story and see how word of mouth picks up after a season.
Star Wars fans will kill the brand eventually
Sadly yeah they will – Disney and esp Kennedy panders to them far too much. She should go and Filoni should take over (he has some really interesting ideas and is taking the franchise away from the Skywalkers which I like – I love seeing the rest of the SW universe).
Thou saying that am looking forward to seeing Jude Law as a Jedi in Skeleton Crew.
I’ve never been interested in anything SW related especially after hearing terrible the fandom is. This show hooked me though. Was really looking forward to season 2 but alas. This was probably my last dip anything SW related. The fanboys can have it.
Oh god I hate this. It’s the first star wars TV show I watched and it reminded me how much I loved the original. It was just great and I am so disappointed
I really enjoyed it and was looking forward to seeing where everything went after the finale. It was really interesting and I thoroughly enjoyed the way the show was shifting the good/evil tropes in SW. This really sucks.
The only thing that bugged me was the pacing and that it was so short, which is something that bugs me about a lot of shows. They really need to have longer seasons than 8-10 episodes. So many series could do much better story and pacing-wise if they had even just a few more episodes than that.
My biggest gripe was that they announced the cancelation on Manny’s birthday. F**k SW, the fans can have it. I’m done.
That’s really unfortunate. It was not a perfect show by any measure (with a budget of over $180M, I felt the set looked incredibly cheap), but it had some bright spots. Sol was a less uni-dimensional Jedi than usual, Osha had an interesting arch, and Qimir/The Stranger was the most compelling villain we’ve had in a very long time in SW (Manny Jacinto completely lit up the screen for me every time he appeared). I hope Disney draws the right lessons from this, but am not quite confident they will.
My husband and I watched the whole season and I wasn’t a huge fan. If it wasn’t for my husband wanting to watch it, I probably would have stopped after episode 3…which I’m pretty sure I fell asleep during.
My favourite Star Wars show is definitely Andor!
Oh yes I LOVED Andor with Ashoka coming in a close 2nd. Seeing Grand Admiral Thrawn in the flesh was amazing and please please please Disney gods, give Thrawn his own series based on the Ascendancy books.
I hate to be a naysayer, but I didn’t love the show. I think there were some glaring flaws and some very questionable acting. However, the lightsaber duels were some of the best we’ve ever seen, even considering the movies.
I don’t know anything about this show, but just want to say Amandla Sternberg can’t catch a break. The racist whining about Rue in the Hunger Games and then dealing with racist SW fanboys.
Sternberg is not the strongest actress, which always makes me wonder why the SW universe persists in casting fairly uninteresting untried actors as leads. She was surrounded by far more fascinating characters and accomplished actors, and it was not to her benefit. Osha and Mae were always the least interesting characters in most scenes, and it wasn’t just the writing or direction. Dafne Keen alone would have been much better as Osha/Mae, and I’ll bet she auditioned for the roles, too. I don’t know why showrunners become wedded to less than talented actors (well, I can think of a few things), but in a show in which nearly every other casting choice is stellar (Lee Jung-jae! Carrie-Anne Moss! Jodie Turner-Smith! Dafne Keen! MANNY FREAKING JACINTO!!!), one wonders why creators choose and stick with dull, inappropriate lead actors (“Well…maybe she’ll improve…?). 🙄
This series had a lot of potential — not set in the Skywalker universe or with Skywalker adjacent characters — but its pacing was so slow. I think everyone had figured out the true nature of Manny’s character before that reveal. The Darth Plagueis and other cameo really came too late.
My family watch (almost) everything Star Wars, and we felt the episodes got exciting in the last 15 minutes only to cliffhanger, then go back to its slow pacing in the next episode.
Some YouTubers are horrible! One gloated “We won” in their announcement of the cancelation. No, thank you.
100% agree on every point
I didn’t care for the show personally but I think its budget is what doomed it. 180 million is a hell of a lot to spend on 8 episodes.