What’s confusing about this entire situation is that Disney and Lucasfilm apparently had plans for The Acolyte’s future. Just last month at San Diego Comic Con, Lucasfilm Publishing announced spinoff books and comics related to The Acolyte, mainly focusing on the characters that died in the series. But the four main characters that are still alive – twins Osha and Mae, Qimir and Vernestra – are stuck on the shelf. So what does this mean exactly? Did Disney believe the deceased Yord and Jecki were far more worthy of investment? On the surface, that would be an easy guess. But the real problem lies with Disney and Lucasfilm succumbing to the pressure that the poisonous side of the Star Wars fandom laid on them.
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Story-wise, it wasn’t going to be for everyone, but it was definitely for a lot of people. The amount of positive reviews by critics and Manny Jacinto acquiring new fans proved as such. But as more shows led by women, LGBTQ+ creatives and POC get canceled, it sends a signal to other networks or services that people aren’t interested in their stories. It limits the amount of diversity allowed in the entertainment industry. It also permits the obscene animosity that’s fragmented the Star Wars fandom. If Star Wars wants to continue to be a dominating franchise in this industry, it has to learn to take chances and stick with them. Otherwise, the world will move on while it’s stuck in the past.
Not to get conspiratorial but I genuinely think that media outlets are pushing this narrative to pretend that money doesn’t dictate everything. Having Star Wars fans fight each other draws attention away from the money focused behavior of every single large corporation.
Disney doesn’t care about the reception itself, only the financial implications and brand damage (which has poor financial implications). Online complainers and review bombers have almost no power whatsoever: I don’t remember seeing anything about that when it was happening, and it did not do significant damage. Online complaints/review bombing happens every month and can actually be helpful, e.g. Velma season 2.
The show blew $180mil— larger than the budget of Top Gun: Maverick— and had significantly lower viewership than all of the other SW D+ shows. Season 2 was guaranteed to do worse. That’s all that matters. Good movies and shows, well liked by critics and audience alike, have underperformed and had their sequels cancelled. Furiosa just happened and lost nowhere near the money that this one did. It’s just capitalism.
And yet I’ve seen more articles about this show now than I ever did when it came out, claiming nonsense about a creative risk adverse Lucasfilm and overstating the power of anti-woke lunatics that complain loudly while accomplishing very little. This shifts blame from executives who wrote a check for this show to spend a shocking near-$700k per minute of runtime. Shifts it right to other viewers— other regular people— with a different opinion on the show, now fighting one another about whether they were too critical. All while tricking people into thinking that racist or sexist whiners have more power than they really do.
I don’t even blame Disney for cancelling it, I would have too. Just think it’s odd that the conversation is dominated by audience feeling and not audience funding.
Also, for another fun stat, I searched up Acolyte’s budget and found this:
This same blasé approach to budgets is exactly what got Disney into the box office mess last year during their 100th anniversary. Flop after flop after flop that could have been avoided with restrained budgets. It was executive failure from start to finish, and yet they’ve mostly avoided consequences by shifting the blame. Thousands of regular employees were fired but most of the executives were fine.