On Monday, news broke that Disney and Lucasfilm would not be moving forward with showrunner Leslye Headland’s Star Wars series, The Acolyte. Since then, the topic has dominated headlines, but I think people are failing to understand what this means for the franchise’s future on Disney+.
Let’s get this out of the way: I don’t have particularly strong feelings about The Acolyte. By no means do I think it was deserving of the sheer fury and vitriol it received (quite un-Jedilike, mind you), and I absolutely do not condone the racist remarks hurdled at its cast and crew, specifically Amandla Stenberg. I enjoyed some of the concepts introduced in the latter half of the season and thought it was, at the very least, a valiant attempt to explore Star Wars outside of the Skywalker Saga.
On the other hand, The Acolyte suffered from typical first-season woes and never seemed to find its footing. Even though I watched each weekly installment with the same (perhaps, naive) optimism I maintain for any Star Wars project, I just never felt excited about this show—but not for a lack of trying.
From the get-go, The Acolyte was deemed controversial, and it was all eerily reminiscent of the backlash to Star Wars: Episode IX – The Rise of Skywalker. Online, negative discourse surrounding the show spread like wildfire, with naysayers taking to Rotten Tomatoes to write scathing reviews—before it even premiered on Disney+. Odds are, if the term “review-bombing” has been added to your personal lexicon, you can thank The Acolyte. Remember when we used to be normal about things? It’s perfectly fine to have an opinion, but this was something else entirely.
Why was The Acolyte not renewed for a second season?
Now, a month after The Acolyte season 1 finale, it looks like Disney will not be giving Headland and Co. the go-ahead for season 2 despite Headland having previously expressed interest in continuing the story. The report was met with thunderous applause from some and contempt from others, but I’m more than willing to bet that there’s a good number of Star Wars fans out there who just kind of shrugged their shoulders and said, “OK.”
Wildly enough, it wasn’t even Disney that offered an update on The Acolyte‘s fate. You see, the chatter stems from a Deadline article that states the show was canceled due to mixed audience reception and declining viewership via Nielsen’s Top 10 originals chart. The Acolyte also cost a fortune to make, with each episode coming in at around $22.5 million. Each. At eight episodes, this was one of Disney and Lucasfilm’s priciest endeavors yet.
These issues are hardly specific to Lucasfilm, however—it’s an industry-wide plague. TV shows are getting more and more expensive to make, and when studios don’t get their return on investment, they can drop any show—even critically successful ones—at the drop of a hat. Still, The Acolyte not being renewed for a second season could be just the beginning, as I think it’s crucial to look at the bigger picture here: new, original stories are simply not being rewarded on Disney+.
What’s in store for Disney+ Star Wars now that The Acolyte is canceled? Well, not much.
For a studio that seems to always have something in the pipeline, it sure seems like Star Wars TV is going into defense mode, as pointed out by Hollywood scooper Daniel Richtman on X. Aside from Star Wars: Skeleton Crew, a miniseries, and Andor, which will end with season 2, nothing remains certain about the franchise’s future on Disney+. Dave Filoni’s Ahsoka show has already been green-lit for a second season, but there’s been no word on when we can expect new episodes to roll out.
Instead, Lucasfilm appears to be shifting back to movies. Jon Favreau’s The Mandalorian & Grogu is slated to arrive in 2026, which will be followed by Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy’s Rey (Daisy Ridley) film (TBD), which is … kind of what fans wanted? To many, Star Wars was always meant to be a cinematic experience, despite excellent additions like The Clone Wars. If done well, the coming years could be a return to form for the galaxy far, far away, but it’s risky, given Lucasfilm’s track record.
If this situation is sounding eerily familiar, that’s because it is. At this point, it’s basically a rite of passage for Disney-owned IPs (i.e. Marvel) to have to course-correct after expanding too quickly, and Lucasfilm has a long and storied past of doing exactly that. Take 2018’s Solo: A Star Wars Story, for one, which bombed at the box office. The company’s answer? Never recast legacy characters. It’s a truly baffling lesson to pull from Solo‘s “flop,” and doesn’t fix the real problems that—likely—contributed to its underperformance.
Now, with The Acolyte being scrapped, I can’t help but notice a pattern. Like Solo, the show dared to do something new, and if it didn’t exactly hit the mark, I appreciate that it tried to add a different texture to the universe while also exploring the High Republic Era. Now, it’s being punished before it even got the chance to learn from its mistakes, just like, say, The Book of Boba Fett.
It’s important to remember that Disney is, at the end of the day, a notoriously safe studio. Why take a risk on something if it isn’t going to pay off? Sadly, the response to The Acolyte was likely just too extreme for corporate execs to take a gamble on season 2, and it almost feels like Lucasfilm is bending the knee to fans. (Or, in this case, “fans.”) Is this a bad thing? I can’t entirely say. But if Star Wars is going to be absent from the TV landscape post-2025, expectations for the upcoming movies—and any project moving forward—just got even higher.
Published: Aug 22, 2024 02:50 pm