It doesn’t take much to see that Star Wars has been going through a rough patch in 2024. The Acolyte, one of the latest Disney Plus series releases, was one of the most divisive projects to ever come out of Lucasfilm. Despite a lukewarm reception from some fans and professional critics, the majority of feedback on the show was not positive. And after weeks of episode releases on Disney Plus, Star Wars: The Acolyte culminated in a mediocre season finale that left its audience fractured and confused. And now, after nearly a month following the season finale, Lucasfilm has opted to not move forward with a second season of the show, effectively canceling The Acolyte after only one season.
So how and why did things for The Acolyte get to this point? While many Star Wars fans online aren’t surprised at the outcome, some are in denial or can’t see why this happened. The reasons for Lucasfilm’s decision to cancel the show are much more important than the content of its story or characters. A combination of poor choices, rising costs, and franchise-impacting consequences led this series to its ultimate fate. Here’s why Star Wars: The Acolyte was canceled by Lucasfilm.
Massive Price Tag for The Acolyte
It costs a lot of money to put together a Star Wars show, let alone one that would be received well and become successful. All of the Disney Plus Star Wars shows come with a big budget for many aspects, not limited to the special effects and marketing outside of production. One season of The Mandalorian is reported to cost Lucasfilm around $120 million, while other shows like Obi-Wan Kenobi ended up costing $90 million for the series. Although some shows had more money spent than others, the price is still pretty steep to tell a story in a galaxy far, far away.
In the case of Star Wars: The Acolyte, the big bill for the series reached a whopping $22.5 million per episode. For the entire first season, that’s around $180 million, and possibly more. There’s simply no getting around the fact that The Acolyte was a very expensive show to make, with some outlets reporting that a lot of the heavy spending started in pre-production of the show. Every computer-generated effect that viewers saw on screen came with a big weight onto the budget, which brought The Acolyte to that final price tag.
Like most other companies, Lucasfilm and its parent company Disney are very frugal and like to cut spending where they can. But they also like to see big results when they’re spending big. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case with The Acolyte by the time the first season came to an end. No company, big or small, is going to be willing to fit such a hefty bill a second time around when the results of its first endeavor were very unfavorable. No amount of fan outcry or critical feedback would easily change that.
Poor Viewership from Star Wars Fans
As if being costly to make wasn’t bad enough for The Acolyte, the viewership numbers of the show were just as dismal. The beginning of the season had potential and a promising reception with the first two episodes, which were released together and screened in movie theaters before going live on Disney Plus. Most Star Wars fans were open to following the new story of Osha, Master Sol, and others that The Acolyte introduced within the season premiere. But as the show went on, the amount of people watching and following The Acolyte began to drop significantly.
When the show began in June 2024, the season premiere episodes were able to capture the attention of around 11 million people. But after that and during each successive week, the show lost more and more viewers and couldn’t sustain the momentum it started with. Most shows experience a drop in viewership at various times during a season, with a few points that spike up viewership during major events and big episodes that receive a lot of positive chatter online. New series like House of the Dragon, Fallout, The Boys, and many others all go through something similar, but end up being received very positively by their season finale.
This was not the case with The Acolyte, and the Nielsen reports released for the show’s run indicate that. Episodes of the series that saw a massive shift during the season were not always positive, with many viewers becoming disillusioned after episodes 3 through 7. Some viewers claimed things got a little better when the lightsaber action picked up in episode 5 and the season finale, but none of it was enough to change the already spiraling numbers of the show. For multiple weeks, The Acolyte disappeared from the Top 10 listing of new shows for 2024, according to Nielsen reports. The biggest conclusion that many came to from the details revealed was that The Acolyte not only had the all-time lowest premiere of a Star Wars show but also had the most disappointing results of a season out of all the Star Wars shows. Things were not looking good for the massively expensive project.
Franchise Damaging Creative Choices from The Acolyte
The amount of money spent and the results yielded for The Acolyte are a major part of why the show was canceled. But what about the content of the show itself and its ramifications for Star Wars as a franchise? Many fans who were disappointed or angered at the show point to multiple creative decisions that were made. To them, this reflected a poor handling of the established Star Wars canon under the current Disney banner. And while some viewers were interested in seeing something new and different for the universe, many others did not the choices made for The Acolyte had any positive impact on the overall franchise.
Canon is something that is constantly brought up when discussing Star Wars. It’s a major part of the continuity between the George Lucas-directed films, and every other piece of Star Wars media released in recent years. Fans love to see things match up smoothly between stories, leading to a continuous through-line between every film and series they follow. When a story comes out with something that contradicts already established aspects of the canon, it causes a major point of contention for fans. This is why you don’t see a lot of retconning within various Star Wars stories on film or TV series.
One of the biggest criticisms of The Acolyte is how multiple parts of the series appear to contradict or flat-out change aspects that were previously established. This includes character appearances, new explanations of things like The Force, and even the portrayal of factions like the Jedi Order. And while most of this was argued by some to be largely subjective, many Star Wars fans watching the show took major issues with the creative choices made. Some were quick to point how the appearance of Yoda at the end of the story has major indications about the character that are largely negative and unnecessary. At the same time, seeing Jedi make choices that contradict everything established about the Jedi in previous Star Wars stories didn’t help.
At the very end of the road, the majority of viewers and critics of The Acolyte felt the show made choices without taking into account how it would affect the greater Star Wars universe. If Star Wars: The Acolyte is supposed to fit within the full canon of the franchise, then how can it not affect the stories set after on the timeline? There are just so many things that viewers could point to and argue that made the series look worse but also affected the franchise in a very negative way.
Badly Engaging with the Audience
There’s one other factor to the cancellation of The Acolyte that hasn’t been discussed in depth. How the creative team behind the show interacted and engaged with Star Wars fans also led to the resulting end of the show. The interviews before and throughout the season are a good example of how not to approach an audience when you’re involved in a project from a very popular franchise. And no matter how one feels about the show itself, how you present it to the audience can be something that impacts its overall success.
Before the release of The Acolyte, multiple interviews with showrunner Lesley Headland and various actors were criticized for multiple reasons. The common factor among them was how Lesley and the actors spoke about the show itself, the overall franchise, and Star Wars fans. A lot of people were upset when actor Charlie Barnett was quoted multiple times in interviews nonchalantly getting facts wrong about Star Wars films, as well as making statements that weren’t accurate about Star Wars storytelling. Although some fans of the show wrote that off as unimportant, it did stand out for many Star Wars fans who felt that the people involved with The Acolyte didn’t display enough care about the franchise. The same thing was brought up multiple times in additional interviews where Lesley Headland made statements about George Lucas, the creation of the show and its timeline, and other aspects of Star Wars as a whole. It was a constant distraction from the show itself and ended up being something that turned viewers away.
And yet, the biggest issue that The Acolyte suffered from was the reactions from Lesley and the team toward fans who were watching the show and being vocally upset about it. Actor Amandla Stenberg was heavily criticized for multiple statements made in interviews about Star Wars fans, as well as a music video she published online that appeared to be responding to the backlash about the show. Lesley Headland also received similar criticism to her statements in multiple interviews after key episodes of The Acolyte were released, specifically the more controversial appearances and narrative choices made during the season. Many felt these instances were reactionary and took away from the appeal of Star Wars: The Acolyte, which may or may not have led to the poor viewership numbers.
If there’s one thing to take from what happened to The Acolyte, it’s that something with a lot of potential still needs to be delivered to be successful. Many factors can bundle up over time and lead to disaster, even for a massively important franchise like Star Wars. Simply putting Star Wars in the title of something, or dropping in big cameos for hardcore fans, is not a viable option for any project to be successful. And despite a few Star Wars fans being upset at the cancellation of The Acolyte, the reality is that it wasn’t a good enough show to justify Lucasfilm continuing its story. No hashtag movement or bitter emotions about the show coming to an end will change that. Like always, it’s the results that truly matter at the end of the day, and Star Wars: The Acolyte didn’t have enough going for it to get another season.
