Deadline are exclusively reporting that The Acolyte, the live-action Star Wars series from Leslye Headland (Russian Doll), has been cancelled by Disney and Lucasfilm after just one season. Following Deadline’s report, The Hollywood Reporter and Variety also confirmed the news of the series cancellation.
None of the trades specified as to what led to The Acolyte’s cancellation, but alluded to low viewership numbers for the series. The Acolyte started off reasonably well in terms of viewership, but viewership dwindled each week and eventually the series failed to enter the Nielsen Top 10 streaming originals chart and it failed to enter from episode four to episode seven, only re-entering the chart with the season finale.
The Acolyte finale entered the Nielsen Top 10 Streaming Originals chart with 335M minutes watched. The Disney and Netflix method for views is to divide the minutes watched by the episodes runtime, this gave The Acolyte finale 7M views (not unique viewers). The season finale of Andor season one also only reached 7M views based off of Nielsen data and implementing the Netflix/Disney method. However, Andor never dropped out of the Nielsen Top 10 Streaming Originals chart and The Acolyte did for four straight weeks due to low viewership. Andor season one was also critically acclaimed, garnering high praise from critics and picking up various awards and nominations, including a the prestigious Peabody award.
Andor, as mentioned, suffered from low viewership and cuts were seemingly made with the series possibly due to that fact. Andor was initially planned for five seasons, with each season taking place in one of three five years before Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. Eventually the plan was cut down to three seasons after season one wrapped and eventually cut down to two seasons following the season one’s release, with the second and final season taking place over the course of four years.
The creator of The Acolyte warned fans before the series debuted that a second season was dependent on viewership and reception. Headland was eager to get a second season and continue her story and had a series bible that would cover at least two seasons of The Acolyte. Both the viewership and reception were disappointing. The Acolyte has the second to lowest critics score on Rotten Tomatoes at 78%, but with a dismal audience score of just 18%, the lowest audience score for a live-action Star Wars series. The lowest critic score is held by The Book of Boba Fett at 66% and has a ‘rotten’ audience score of 49%, the second lowest audience score of any live-action Star Wars series. It was just recently said by Temuera Morrison, Boba Fett himself, that the reception of The Book of Boba Fett impacted the future of the character and that the character had been put on the ‘shelf’ for a little while.
Rotten Tomatoes ratings for single Star Wars series:
Andor – 96% critics, 87% audience
Ahsoka – 86% critics, 64% audience
Obi-Wan Kenobi – 82% critics, 61% audience
The Acolyte – 78% critics, 18% audience
The Book of Boba Fett – 66% critics, 49% audience
I know some fans will be disappointed with the news of a cancellation. However, it felt inevitable given past shows treatments, the low viewership, underwhelming critics reception and just how divisive the show became. All this attached to a product that cost a whopping $180M to produce, you can understand why any studio would opt to not risk spending a substantial amount of money on a second season.
I hope that Leslye Headland gets to tell what’s left of her story for The Acolyte. It would be great to see her help produce a novel or a comicbook run that would see The Acolyte conclude and to give fans of the series closure.
The next live-action Star Wars series due to be released is Skeleton Crew and will debut exclusively on Disney+ December 3rd.
Thank you for reading the article and if you enjoyed your read, or if you’re a regular reader of Bespin Bulletin then I kindly ask if you’d consider showing your support and appreciation by tipping me via my Ko-Fi page here, each tip is deeply appreciated or supporting my work via my newly launched Patreon page here. You can also listen to the latest episode of our podcast, BOB The Podcast, at the bottom of this page and on all good podcast services (new episodes release on Thursdays), where you can also sign up to a mailing list to receive and email each time I publish a new article and you if you’re not already doing so, follow me on Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok and Threads
