Disney should be ashamed for further fueling the trolling of ‘The Acolyte’ cast and crew

Disney terribly mishandled the cancellation of The Acolyte, making the cast and crew even more susceptible to harassment and trolling.

The Acolyte is the latest Disney+ Star Wars original series. Although the show earned positive reviews from critics and drew praise for containing some of the best lightsaber duals and capitalizing on the most beloved Star Wars lore, it faced relentless attacks from misogynistic and racist trolls.

The trolling began because the show featured a diverse cast and came from female showrunner Leslye Headland. Although such harassment is typical for any female-led or diverse series, the backlash to The Acolyte was more unhinged than usual, with trolls leaving tens of thousands of fake reviews on the show, relentlessly harassing its cast and crew, and sending death threats to those reporting on the series.

Despite the vocal unhinged trolls, The Acolyte still managed to secure a fanbase and positive reviews. Unfortunately, the show didn’t perform well enough viewership-wise for a season 2 renewal. Countless top-rated and critically acclaimed shows have been cut for this same reason. Of course, the reason for the cancelation doesn’t matter, as the trolls were always going to celebrate its cancelation and claim it was canceled for being “woke” and because women created it. As if it wasn’t bad enough that Disney decided to allow these obnoxious trolls to believe they won, the studio has done nothing to lessen the predictable attacks on The Acolyte cast.

How Disney mishandled The Acolyte‘s cancelation

Given how unhinged bigots have been over The Acolyte, one would think that Disney would’ve handled The Acolyte‘s cancellation as delicately as possible. It had the power to at least try to deflect the hatred and trolling everyone predicted would arise from the cancellation. The studio could’ve released a carefully crafted statement in which it acknowledged all the achievements of The Acolyte and how groundbreaking of a series it was for the Star Wars franchise. It could’ve defended the work of The Acolyte cast and crew, highlighting that the unfortunate cancellation was not their fault.

After all, it’s not uncommon for streamers or networks to release such supportive statements as a courtesy. For example, even the widely unpopular Max released a statement reiterating how proud it was of the entire cast and crew of Our Flag Means Death despite canceling the show. Yet, Disney chose not to release any official statement on the show. Instead, it simply allowed its sources to go to the media with the cancellation. Not only did it invite speculation into the reason for the cancellation, but it didn’t even bother to recognize the contributions of the cast and crew. It’s a cold way to cancel any show, but it was especially egregious when the studio knew full well that Headland and stars like Amandla Stenberg would be blamed for the quiet cancellation.

As if that weren’t bad enough, Disney suddenly decided to quietly remove all of The Acolyte merchandise from its website. @DiscussingFilm broke the news, revealing that searching “The Acolyte” on the website will generate zero search results. 

It’s hard to make sense of Disny’s decision to remove all its merch just days after announcing the cancellation. The studio didn’t even bother informing anyone that the merch would leave. Meanwhile, the decision makes it seem like Disney is determined to pretend that The Acolyte never even existed. Once again, it’s impossible that the studio didn’t predict such a move would further fuel trolls by giving them something else to laugh about. Stenberg, who received the most harassment from racist trolls during The Acolyte‘s run, has become the prime target for trolls.

Trolls have been spamming the comments on every single one of her Instagram posts, mocking her, rejoicing about The Acolyte‘s cancelation, and leaving racist insults. While the trolling was always going to happen in the case of a cancelation, Disney could’ve lessened the blow by releasing a statement defending the work of the cast and crew. In fact, it could have just released a statement denouncing the sexist and racist attacks on its employees, but it has remained silent. From the onset, Disney has been content to take a step back and reap the profits of The Acolyte while letting its cast and crew face horrific harassment. Now, the studio is too cowardly to even announce the show’s cancellation itself or offer the slightest show of support for the cast.