Deadline just published an exclusive article about The Acolyte’s cancellation. Since Deadline is a reputable Hollywood business magazine with actual industry resources, there is no doubt about the veracity of its reporting. The lowest-rated live-action Star Wars series on Disney+, which cost $180 million to make and is also the lowest-rated Marvel or Star Wars series/season finale on Disney+ (with even fewer viewers than Ms. Marvel), will not will get a second season. As I reported in my Nielsen article a few days ago, the series finale of “Acolyte” didn’t even have a quarter of the viewership of “The Mandalorian” season 2 finale, and performed better than even “Ms. Marvel” “The series finale couldn’t be worse, it’s a new absolute low. The vast majority of fans ignored the series and refused to watch it. News of the cancellation comes just days after Nielsen released numbers for the Acolyte series finale, although of course Disney had known about the ratings internally for weeks.
From then on, both Leslie Headland and the Acolyte would become obscure footnotes in Star Wars history. The woman who sought to destroy the Jedi and wanted people to support a psychotic murderer she identified with and considered her “avatar” will never work for Lucasfilm again. Frankly, the best thing Disney can do is give The Following the Willow treatment and erase the show from existence, or at least officially label it as non-canon.
At this point, I guess we finally don’t have to talk about The Acolyte anymore. Let’s forget all this. To the twelve people who want a second season: Welcome to the real world!
One final question remains: Why was the man who greenlit Willow and Acolyte on Disney+ (two of Disney+’s biggest flops) and responsible for the box-office disasters of Raiders of the Lost Ark and Dial of Fate? Do women still have jobs?
Read the exclusive Deadline article here!
Damn it!
