'The Acolyte' Canceled: Disney's Star Wars Spinoff Done After One Season

There was a good show in there somewhere, but what we got wasn't it.

I'm not sure walking away from the season what I was supposed to have learned. It's ok to kill people sometimes as long as you're pretty sure they messed up your life?

Mando is about found families and learning to trust.

Andor is about how war/strife changes people.

Obi-wan is about relearning to believe (in yourself/the force) and what's worth fighting for.

Ahsoka is about students and teachers, how they each can learn from one another.

Even if you disagree with my interpretation, you can at least agree it's a possible interpretation.

But Acolyte... I just don't know what I'm supposed to get out of it. The dark side ain't so bad? Jedi don't like others using the force?

My takeaway was indeed that the Jedi of old weren't the good guys, although they still believed they were.
The jedi not being strictly all that "good" isn't all that new and I definitely would've liked to see that explored more, as well as more "neutral" force users, or even something from the perspective of the dark side too. I also don't think this show was as bad as the review bombing made it out to be and on YT you kept just seeing the same rage baiting bigots too but it definitely missed the mark in many areas, despite having some good moments too. Still, a lot of the hate definitely came from the fact that we had a black female main character and some lesbian force witches. That's pretty hard to ignore with how loud those people are.

I still want more something like Andor though. That was still the best Star Wars I've ever seen.
- Actually ignoring the ragebait is easy. It exists for everything. The problem is when a TV show/film is weak. It makes the ragebait easy because now they are "right". The issue with the show has nothing to do with it having a black female lead. The story just wasn't that good. The story is still not that good if she were a white dude. It's not end of the world terrible, just mediocre.
  
  Anyway, back to my point. Shitty people have shitty opinions, it's not worth listening to. OMG did you hear what the bigot said? No, was it shitty? It was? I'm not surprised. Stop giving them attention.
If I ever do one of those “watch everything in order” things, I might just watch episode 5. The fight scene was sick. Given how inconsequential the story was, it would probably just feel like an episode of Visions.
It's ok to kill people sometimes as long as you're pretty sure they messed up your life?

You could say the OG had the message that it's okay to become a terrorist if the government kills your aunt and uncle.
- Sure, but it had other messages too. I'm not sure Acolyte had the one.
I just didn't like acolyte because it was repetitive and redundant. The story is very similar to star wars and bring very little be too the table

Huh… I thought it was pretty interesting. Kinda bummed.

Also, kung fu + force powers is fantastic for fight scenes, so I hope they use that stuff more in other shows/movies.

Edit: the anti-woke review bombing crap that people apparently got up to seems to have played a role in the decision (reading between the lines), which is pretty shitty.

E2: instead of just downvoting, I’m interested to hear what people so strongly disliked about it.

The 'anti-woke' stuff is so frustrating. As soon as some youtube grifter labels something as 'woke' and their followers start review bombing, it frames all subsequent criticism of a thing: Mainstream outlets are wary of the association, so are kinder to a show that it deserves (which then brings their credibility into question for some people); Star Wars nerds who like anything in the universe start dismissing valid criticism because they assume it's been made in bad faith (because 'anti-woke' sorts don't always make themselves so obvious and do highjack legitimate concerns); and anyone trying to genuinely point out faults has to preface everything with where they're coming from (which can get tedious if nothing else).

Anyway: I don't have particularly strong opinions about the show but what I disliked about it was that it reminded me of 'Secret Invasion' and what I saw of 'Echo': it suggests that Disney don't want to do the traditional 'Andor' style of making television, and instead keep with the process of: write + shoot + re-write + reshoot ... This rarely works, and ends up with a show that has inconsistent characters ('Yord' changes personality about 5 times), inconsistent quality (since sets used for reshoots are typically smaller and less dressed), and inconsistent tone (people liked episode 5, but I'd argue that neck-snaps are too violent compared to the vibe of other episodes, which often seemed aimed at young children).

Also, there needs to be a moratorium of any characters saying they have a 'bad feeling about this' (if anyone says anything like this is S2 of Andor I'll be devasted)
- I hope you didn’t just jinx Andor S2.
In terms of dislike Ryan George does a good job, https://youtu.be/PqwEE6G6zaU

But in more detail there are a lot of decisions made by characters that are fun in the moment, but don't really make sense.

The twins are angry at Sol because he killed their mother, but Sol doesn't clarify that she was turning into a shadow monster?

Osha was a bad Jedi, fell out of the order, but then switches to dark side real quick and kills Sol.

We have to leave your sister behind and mind wipe her because there is no room in the ship? Also the mind wipe is clearly just a "we need a reason to stretch the story" move and if they had made a season 2 would have been undone quickly.

Why did the beaver man mess with the ship? He stopped Sol, but was also an ally?

I'm sure there are more but in general this show just didn't really tell a story I'm interested in.

Don't get me wrong it has some great things I want to know more about. The era of Star Wars is fun to explore and new. Space witches and how they compare (or are?) to the night sisters and their magic/force use. Possessing a Jedi. New Dark side users and origins.

The interesting story to me was/is Qimir, so I hope we can pick that character up again.
- Sol doesn't clarify that she was turning into a shadow monster?
  
  He realized that was wrong as soon as he killed her. Maybe he could've explained why he thought that, but it would've come across as making excuses. The rest I don't disagree with.
I agree. I frankly think the show was quite bad in terms of tone, cinematography, and unfortunately acting. It all felt kinda cheap and poorly planned to me. I say this as someone has genuinely enjoyed all of the other Star Wars shows (yep, even Obi-Wan). But I also found it interesting and really enjoyed the fight scenes and the new yet familiar setting. Regardless of my opinion of the technical side of the production, I absolutely would have watched another season to see where the story was headed.
- Agreed. Just like so many other franchise series right now, that includes, Star Wars (case in point, Acolyte), Star Trek (Picard series, except the last season maaaybe) and the Marvel universe (Secret Wars anyone?), it started strong in the first few episodes. Then after we get to the half time in the season it drops off hard and we see weird resolutions to plot points or parts of the plot do not get any meaningful explanation or ending.
  
  I am sad to see Acolyte might have been cancelled for "woke agenda reviews" when it should have been cancelled for bad writing.
I watched all of it and as some others have said I think there was a great story in there somewhere but it was just buried under a mountain of bad writing, crappy gimmicks, and terrible continuity.

I enjoyed elements of the story enough that I was willing to give a second season a chance, but I'm honestly not surprised it was cancelled.

The anti-woke stuff was shitty and definitely didn't help but I don't think that alone would have caused Disney to cancel a series if they really believed it could be successful
My opinions on it are the storytelling was terrible, Sol (and a lot of the other characters but especially Sol) was uninteresting with not great acting, the two flashback episodes were unnecessary, one of the reasons for the massacre on Brendok being a Jedi was homesick was awful, Yoda's appearance in the finale seemed liked a cynical move to try to get a second season, I thought the final episode made The Stranger look weak and undermined him a bit, I would have preferred Osha killed Mae when she was passed the lightsabre, and it was just dull overall. Episode 5, however, was absolutely fantastic and there were glimpses of other great things. The potential for season 2 to be really good was there but the potential for season 1 to be good was also there but wasn't delivered so I had no faith the 2nd season would either.

I am a huge Star Wars fan, I really enjoyed Boba Fett, Obi Wan, and the other series but Acolyte was more of a burden to watch. I watched it all because because I'm a huge Star Wars fan and I wanted it to be good, it just wasn't. I would have loved to see more of The Stranger and Darth Plagueis though.
To echo @[email protected] again, the downvotes came on so fast for what was just two random people’s earnest opinions. Tell everyone what you think about the show, let’s talk! I know I shouldn’t take the votes personally, but it doesn’t feel great when it’s just my honest opinion about a tv show.
Blaming the anti-woke crowd is just cover for how crap the series was. It was a terribly written series where character's motivation was whatever the plot demanded at the time. The story clearly had a goal it wanted to achieve and showed something completely different to their narrative several times. Throughout the series, but particularly episode 5, characters teleport as necessary for plot/action scenes. It's now cannon that you can seduce people to the Dark side with that dick...

with certain corners of the internet going after Headland, who is a member of the LGBTQ+ community

That's some odd phrasing. Are they not allowed to say that someone is gay?

It feels like they are trying to dog whistle something, but I'm not sure what. Or was all the criticism completely unrelated and they are trying to stretch a point?

[Update]

I have been educated that this is not an uncommon phrasing to use by someone who is gay.

Presumably following the motto of a rising tide raises all the ships and they have expressed a preference for their success to be viewed as a success for everyone?

TIL.

The producers once alluded that they were being review bombed by conservatives for the acolyte being too woke. Now, that might be true, but, the show also sucked in more than one way, which means there was no one to push back the reviews.
Reminds me of the George Carlin bit on soft-language.

going after Headland, who happens to be a member of the LGBTQ+ community
- That's basically how I read it initially.
  
  Apparently that is how she refers to herself and its perfectly normal for folks to not refer to themselves as "gay" but as being part of the community.

Kinda weird to blame the bad reviews on “anti-woke bigots”, then cancel the show to appease the bigots.

I did like the show, which looks like an unpopular opinion. Guess the tragedy of Darth Plagueis really isn’t a story the Jedi would tell you.

The one good thing about streaming services like Disney+ is that they have the platform metrics, and they can push shows against audiences and get watch metrics, retention metrics, etc from a large group of viewers. i.e. any online media storms can be weathered by good data of how the show is really performing.

The focus on anti-woke messaging from the show creatives seems like a rhetorical tool, if its the strongest message they have about the property that is what they are going to do to bring attention to it. If you have positive reviews, you talk about the reviews. If you have strong view numbers you talk about the viewer numbers. Since silence is the worst thing for a media property, if you have nothing else you talk about controversy real or imagined. Is there real anti-woke messaging for this show, sure, but like the standard background level you get on anything; is it the most interesting and important aspect of this show? Apparently - otherwise why would the creatives be talking about it?

The rhetoric escalation tree reveals uncomfortable truths. Woke/AntiWoke doesn't matter, only if it makes money, if it makes money, it gets another season.
- Yup. It’s easier to blame anti-woke than to admit to poor business decisions. Disney only cares about burning $180 mil + marketing and getting brand damage in exchange. Bloated budgets are the killer of movies, and movies actually make money whereas streaming shows don’t. A movie needs to make 2-2.5x the budget to break even, and when you’re blowing that kind of money without collecting ticket prices…
  
  $180mil is more than the budget of Top Gun: Maverick which made $1.5bil. Inside Out 2 had a slightly larger budget of $200mil and has made over $1.6bil so far. The Acolyte made nothing and didn’t drive sales, so it was a poor investment.
  
  People who really liked the show could try a gofundme for Disney, request merch to buy, or if they’re extremely wealthy give them $200mil to make another season. Looping Acolyte while asleep to pump viewership would’ve helped too, as you basically noted— Velma received a lot more hate but with high viewership and lower budget, it got a second season. In capitalistic America it’s difficult to convince a company to make less profit, much less discard hundreds of millions. Money is all that matters.

I can live without this one. I want Andor season 2. The beauty of Andor is we know how it ends.

Pretty sure andor season 2 is under production.

Well, no surprise there.

After the first two episodes I was willing to give it a chance, especially since they dispensed with the whole "Is she or isn't she the killer?" nonsense almost immediately.

Then everything went to shit in episode 3 and I just stopped watching. Mae's damage vs. the Jedi is that she set a fire that killed everyone? Seriously? How is that the fault of anyone except Mae? To the point where she wants to kill everyone else?
- If you had kept watching, then you would have learned that episode didn’t show the full picture and that Osha’s memory of the events had been altered by the Jedi.

It was nowhere near as bad as the reviews suggest. Manny Jacinto was honestly great. The Stranger's helmet design with the metal cables looking like a deranged smile was cool, as was his ability to temporarily disable lightsabers. The new king fu element to the fight scenes was interesting.

The fight choreography drew me in and then that all went out the window in Ep. 3.
- Episode 3 was just to make us ask questions that would be answered in episode (I think) 7. They didn’t set this up very well though. It was presented too genuinely, and people didn’t realize we were seeing through the flawed eyes of a child narrator.
His ability to short out lightsabers was another Thrawnism, cortosis weave. Like Thrawn, largely wasted and apparently thrown in for no real reason.

I don't even feel like it was that 'woke'. But it was that bad. Bad wiring, bad acting, worse storyline. The only good thing was the choreography of a couple of the fight scenes except that they mostly made no sense. Not even Darth Vader cut through so many Jedi like butter but this random guy that 'i believe you would refer to me as sith' does with ease. I really think she was determined to ruin the originals. Basically she took everything that was cool and good and did it worse.

It's like the scene in Talladega nights where Cal is telling Gerrard the things that America created.

All woman witches with a connection to the dark side - Dathomir.

Children created by a vergence in the force - Anakin.

Force choke - Vader (this one made me sad).

Purple light saber - Windu.

Multi piece red light saber - Maul.

PIP - fallout.

Then there's just totally random things that are dumb: Regular Jedi having yellow lightsabers. The stones used in yellow lightsabers were used for the guardians of the temple. Kyber crystals make blue or green and that's why they are that color in the originals.

It was loosely implied that there was another Sith, maybe plagiues, implying that Qimir was his apprenrice making him be actively searching for his own apprentice ignoring the rule of 2.

Mace Windu says there hadn't been Sith in a millennium and the generally accepted context is that they've always existed they just hide from the Jedi. Now you a clear story of sith killing Jedi only 100 years prior.

Anissya tells the Jedi to make a perimeter but then they just all ignore that order and all go to the same place?

The only way you could execute a show this poorly is on purpose. Which I think is true, I think she wanted people to reference her show for the fun cool stuff because it's more fresh on their minds.

Luke's lightsaber was green because it wouldn't have looked good against the blue sky in Return of the Jedi. That's it. That's the reason.

Not even the filmmakers get their panties in a twist over "the lore" like that.
- Lol - yes you're right but you're wrong, oh so wrong
  
  There's countless amount of lore around light saber colors. Why Sith sabers are red, why Ahsoka's are white, why Rey's is yellow, why Mace's is purple. Then there's many instances where they intentionally used a wrong color as symbolism like in Luke's final projection scene.

Good, I don't know how something like this could've been created in the first place. It makes it seem like anyone can be in charge of big budget shows regardless of if they have talent.

Only if you commit to ignoring the source material.

I liked it. Struggled at the beginning with lots of walking and talking to fill out time, but it tried to do something interesting with the rashomon story structure at the end.

I thought the seductive elements of the Darkside that they played up worked extremely well.

The squid games actor was great.

The fight scene in episode five was tons of fun. When Jason from the Good Place killed X2 by stabbing her 3 or 4 times with the short lightsaber I rewound to watch it a few times.

Probably would've been a better movie.

This is the first I've even heard of this show. It must have dropped during one of my "pissed off that Disney can't be arsed to keep their Android app working." phases.

Oh well.

I was excited for it but stopped halfway through episode 3. They should have started with episode 3, left things unclear then start off with episode 1.

I honestly didn't feel any sort of connection with any of the characters. I felt bad for Sol. He got peer pressured by a bunch of Jedi buttheads.

I'd rather have more episodes of Boba Fett than The Acolyte.
- I'd rather have more episodes of Boba Fett than The Acolyte.
  
  Hell no. Boba Fett was way worse. Worse than Obi-Wan even. Just give me more mature & dark shit like Andor.

All the "woke," incel bullshit aside, it wasn't very good.

I've been a Star Wars fan since '77 and wanted to like it, couldn't make it past Ep. 3.
- It was... fine I guess. I liked a lot of the actors, but the plot was completely squandered. I finished it, but it's completely skippable.
  
  They had a chance to tell an interesting story at at least one point in the show but settled for the most boring and pointless story beats instead.

My larger worry about this cancellation is the potential graveyard they may have kicked off. Netflix has a lot of cancelled shows that no one will ever watch, it just dilutes their overall library. If even Star Wars isn’t immune to this, then I really do hope Disney wasn’t lying and we start seeing fewer streaming shows coming out. I think we’d all prefer quality over quantity.

I don't think this cancelation kicks off the problem of dilution of Star Wars brand identity. I think that problem has been happening for a while with the scattershot releases of movies and shows without the promised cohesion. There doesn't seem to be a vision from high up of what Star Wars should look like, or where it should be going with the setting.
- I highly doubt there will ever be a unified vision. Weren’t Favreau and Filoni supposed to be the vision for Disney+, and then Kathleen Kennedy kept stepping in?
  
  Marvel got lucky with Feige, no one else has yet to achieve it. We shall see if James Gunn can succeed with DC
The one that hurts the most is Grendel. Netflix killed it without even airing it. :(

https://bleedingcool.com/tv/grendel-netflix-series-details-cancellation-crushing-matt-wagner/
- WHAT?! Man, that sucks. Big fan of the Grendel comics. It would've been cool to see Argent.

I liked the ending but overall the show was terrible. Not much is lost with the cancellation.

I didn't even bother. I checked out after Ahsoka. I really don't give af about "woke", the writing has been terrible. These series have so much embedded lore you have to watch YouTube vids to figure out context. I don't have time for all that.

I thought Ashoka was good, I just didn't like that I had to watch a 5 seasons of an animated tv show to understand what tf was going on.
- Same. I really liked the Jedi trainer droid. I thought that was cool. And the jedi played by the actor that passed away. But the zombie storm-troopers at the end were just too much, but I'm a middle aged man, the kids probably loved that part.

I didn't like it but I think a season 2 was best than canceled, what did I gain watching s1? There's no story, only setups and now everything was thrown in the garbage, what a waste of time.

It deserves to be cancelled for not telling a story
- Then cancel Ahsoka, imo

Too bad. I didn’t care very much for most of S1, but it seemed to be getting going in the last couple episodes and gave me hope that S2 would be decent.

For the best.

I enjoyed it overall. But any attempt to tie up the loose threads would water down the few good things the series did… which are largely rooted in the mystery of not fully explaining them.

If there’s more story involving these characters or event worth hearing, use a different High Republic series to tell them.

Waiting for Andor :)

Season 2 is coming and Season 1 got a 4K physical release.

I hope they can continue the story in supplementary material.

Comics.

MOTHERFUCKER. Now what are they going to do?!?!! They give us a taste of Darth Plaguis and Yoda 100 years younger and they CANCEL it?

I dunno. Leave it be hopefully. The show just looked really cheap. Their clothes looked like costumes instead of actual clothes. Not to mention how poor the makeup was for everyone.

Maybe I just prefer quality over quantity.
- And yet it carried a $180m budget, more than something like dune part 1 (and slightly less than part 2).
They can still do something with them. They did nothing in the show.

disney caving to the toxic part of the fandom and cancelling another show with a poc lead? this is why we pirate.

The "anti-woke" (or whatever they call themselves) hate is absolutely ridiculous, and anyone who takes it seriously is an idiot.

That being said though... The show was just bad. Nonsensical or missing character motivations, a thin excuse for a plot, and a huge disappointment compared to what it could have been.

I really hope the reactionary hatred didn't factor into the cancellation, or at the very least that Disney doesn't take away from this that they should hire fewer women and people of color. I hope they take away to invest more into better writing.
- FWIW, they ran a survey prior to the cancellation asking if people watched the whole thing, what they liked, what they didn't like, what they'd like to see in Season 2.
  
  I expect those survey results had more to do with it than anything else.
More like, show's dogshit

You can't handwave a show that's written as badly to botch the golden premise that show had

I mean a fucking Jedi killer? How the hell do you hire writers that bad to botch this?
- if that was the case then d+ wouldn't have removed every single merch item from the store. they basically just caved to a bigoted mob for no reason.
If your pirating a show you like, your viewer numbers don't contribute to keeping it going.

Killed by incels, racists, and people who expect waaaay too much from the Star Wars franchise.

It is possible that a lot of people simply didn't like the show. I personally struggled to get through it. Some people have external social/political axes that they bring to grind and use Star Wars as a veneer, but painting every opposing opinion as that is putting words in the mouths of a lot of people. Star Wars fans really need to stop knifefighting eachother and accept that fans with differing opinions exist.
- It definitely is possible. It’s also possible, and factual, that I’m just one of the people that didn’t care about the things I mentioned, and just liked the show. I want a season 2 & 3, to be honest. Sad news. I am angry.
The commercials killed it for me. I hated having to watch commercials.