Star Wars: The Acolyte was a divisive, uneven, and daring stab at a different type of Jedi story. But decent reviews and an average viewership apparently wasn’t enough to convince Disney to invest in its future. The streaming platform is canceling Acolyte after just one season.
Deadline broke the news that Star Wars: The Acolyte wasn’t getting renewed for season 2, dashing fans’ hopes of seeing Manny Jacinto’s Qimir and Amandla Stenberg’s Osha explore the dark side of the force together following the grim events of the first eight episodes. Unlike many other Jedi-centric Star Wars stories, The Acolyte leaned into the hubris and fallibility of the space wizards and their religious order.
There were some cool ideas there, even if the show rarely managed to pull them off between the rough writing and short episodes. But that’s what second seasons can be for, helping creators reflect on what worked and what didn’t, and focusing in on the threads that resonated most with audiences. Lots of shows don’t find their identity until season 2 or 3, though most don’t have the luxury of waiting that long in the current hyper-competitive streaming wars.
Acolyte’s unorthodox take on the Jedi and its diverse casting also made it a target for a certain subset of extremely toxic Star Wars fans who waged a relentless campaign against the show. In addition to being hyper-critical of every promotional interview from the cast, apparent plot discrepancies and retconned lore blew up into weird micro-controversies.
Showrunner Leslye Headland had previously said she’d pitched Disney on the her ideas for a second season and was hoping for renewal. Executives at the house of mouse apparently weren’t convinced. Deadline reports that Acolyte quickly fell off Nielsen’s top-10 list for weekly viewership, and was believed to have the worst performing season finale of any Star Wars show.
Acolyte is hardly the only one not to get renewed for a second season, though. The Book of Boba Fett and Obi-Wan Kenobi also didn’t pan out. But Disney did move ahead with The Mandalorian, Ahsoka, and Andor, whose second season begins streaming in 2025. The Skeleton Crew will be the company’s latest experiment in a galaxy far, far away. The coming-of-age kids rescue story stars Jude Law and debuts on December 3.
