• The Star Wars offshoot will not be returning for a second season
• The series held a 78% rating on Rotten Tomatoes
• News of the cancellation has been met with fury by many fans online
Star Wars fans have reacted furiously online to news that spin off series The Acolyte will not be returning for a second season on Disney+.
The series, which featured Squid Games star Lee Jung-jae and Hunger Games’ Amandla Stenberg, recently wrapped it’s first season on Disney’s streaming service, receiving mostly positive reviews from the critics, with a score of 78% on Rotten Tomatoes. However, an audience score of 18% reflects how divisive the show ended up being with fans of the Star Wars franchise.
Upon the show’s release, a section of the Star Wars fanbase dismissed the show as being ‘woke’ due to the hiring of Leslye Headland, who is openly gay, as the first woman to create a Star Wars series. The same fans also lambasted the female-centric nature of the show and claimed it was pushing an LGBTQ+ agenda, citing Stenberg’s decision to use both she/her and they/them pronouns.
The cast featuring many people of colour was also believed to be an issue for this section of the fanbase who, it seems, can wrap their heads around all manner of alien life forms in galaxies far, far away, but cannot comprehend human beings having different sexualities or skin colours. Some commentors labelled the series ‘The Wokelyte’ and are believed to be responsible for ‘review bombing’ the show to make it seem more unpopular than it truly was.
Beginning with 4.8m views for its opening two episodes on Disney+, The Acolyte began with a strong start to life on the streaming platform, making it Disney’s biggest season premiere of the year so far. This total would rise to 11.1m after five days of streaming, debuting on Nielsen’s top 10 originals chart in its opening week at number seven with 488m minutes watched. The Acolyte would drop out of the top 10 in its third week of streaming, however, and would not return there until the season finale, which was watched for a total of 335m minutes, believed to be the lowest ever for a Star Wars season finale.
With The Acolyte being a big budget series, expected to cost north of $100m per series to make, there is a high threshold for viewership given such expenditure. However, viewership was likely affected by fans who dismissed it from the beginning as being ‘woke’.
The news of the cancellation has been met with widespread fury on social media, with many fans lambasting Disney’s decision as ‘shameful’ and catering to ‘the absolute worst people’.
The Acolyte also starred Manny Jacinto, who had previous roles in The Good Place and Top Gun: Maverick, as well as Queen and Slim’s Jodie Turner-Smith and Charlie Barnett, who had already worked with Headland on Netflix’s Russian Doll.
(h/t Deadline)
