Star Wars: The Acolyte Was Never Given A Chance To Be Mid

Summary

From the momentThe Acolytestarted its marketing campaign in earnest, people have been rooting against it. Of course, when I say people, I don’t mean the general audience who just wants to watchStar Warsshows and have a good time, I mean self-titled Star Wars fanswho decided they hated the show before it even airedbecause of ‘wokeness’, feminism, and lesbians.

This isn’t an exaggeration – fans werereview bombing the showbefore it ever came out, based entirely on their distaste for diversity. They didn’t want the show to exist, but it was too late for that, so the next best thing would be for the show to be cancelled. Ultimately, the angry mob got what it wanted. It was announced earlier this month thatthe show would not be renewed for a second season, and all the bigots cheered, because it appeared that Disney agreed with them: The Acolyte didn’t deserve a second season.

The AcolyteWasMid, But So Is Everything Else Star Wars

Here’s the thing: I also agree with those people, but obviously, not for the same reasons.Despite having some moments of brilliance, the Acolyte wasn’t very good – the writing was messy, the pacing was inconsistent, and while its central themes and conflicts were compelling and interesting, the show as a whole wasn’t executed in a way that made it feel particularly special. But the thing is, I don’t think anything coming out of Star Wars right now is very good, and none of those shows deserved second seasons either. And yet, all of Lucasfilm’s safer TV projects are still running, despite being boring and uncreative. The Acolyte is the one that got the axe.

Andor is the exception, obviously. Andor deserves as many seasons as it needs, and if it gets cancelled I’ll have no choice but to form my own angry mob.

What makes this sting more is that The Acolyte had something over these other mediocre television shows: it was doing something new. I don’t mean that it was more diverse, because I’m a normal person who doesn’t see the presence of diversity in a TV show as a reason to keep or cancel it. I mean that it was actually thematically interesting, the same way Andor was.

Andor was cool because it spoke truth to power by beingovertly critical of fascismin a way that was unavoidable. You couldn’t ignore its political themes in favour of its stylishness and tight writing – it was the whole point, the whole story. The Acolyte challenged the Star Wars canon by questioning if the role of the Jedi in this fictional galaxy have similar, if more subtle, strains of authoritarianism. It didn’t execute its criticism flawlessly, but it was fresh, and exciting. It made me think about the Jedi in ways I never had before. It wasn’t a retreading of familiar stories, time periods, and characters from previous movies. It wasnew.

But it wasn’t this that fans were largely and loudly complaining about. No, it was wokeness. Because The Acolyte dared to have diversity, it was held to a higher standard. It had to be more perfect than anything else in the franchise, because there was already so much anger at the fact that it existed the way it did, and said the things it said. It didn’t matter that by being somewhat thematically interesting, it already had a leg up on its competition. To Lucasfilm, that new take on the canon was a liability.

The Acolyte Deserved More Room To Grow

It’s no surprise, then, that The Acolyte was cancelled. There was too much riding on its success, and when it failed to execute, Lucasfilm cut its losses. But that’s really not through any fault of its showrunners – again, most of Star Wars’ television projects fail to execute. They’reallyawn-fests. The Acolyte just wasn’t offered the same grace as the rest of its shows, because it became the focal point of a culture war.

Is there a lesson to take from this? I’m not sure. Maybe it’s that streaming is destroying television as a medium by making it all too easy to cancel shows based on initial, middling receptions. Maybe it’s that corporate capitulation to weirdos on the internet is as disgusting as it is inevitable. Maybe it’s that Star Wars is boring now, and will soon fall into cultural obscurity because it refuses to commit to doing anything new and interesting.

It’s hard to say what happens from here. What I do know is that The Acolyte was just as mediocre as everything else that’s come out of Star Wars. If you’re gonna cancel one, then consider cancelling them all. It’s all just content mulch, anyway.