Credit: Inside the MagicThe Acolyte will go down in Star Wars history as one of the most contentious entries in the canon, but it’s impossible to say that it is one of the best.
The tone of the show was all over the place, the sequencing of the plot was at times bizarre, and, ultimately, Lucasfilm decided that Season 2 wasn’t in the cards for the Leslye Headland show. But while The Acolyte might not have deserved a second season, the Star Wars franchise desperately needs it.
Any discussion of The Acolyte merits a mention that the series was essentially hamstrung before it even began. A significant portion of the Star Wars fandom has consistently shown itself to have extreme vitriol against any depiction of people of color or LGBTQIA+ individuals as protagonists, and the announcement that this new series would feature both immediately doomed it to constant review-bombing (not that Leslye Headland cared much).
Never mind that the actual narrative of the Star Wars series did not actually engage in racial politics or examination of what it means to have a cast of mostly POC. The mere presence of Amandla Stenberg and Lee Jung-jae as the leads of The Acolyte caused it to be immediately pegged as “woke” or “radical.”
Likewise, the entire conversation about “lesbian space witches” and what that could mean for the retroactive history of Anakin Skywalker said far more about the conservative bent of fandom than it actually had anything to contribute to the plot or our understanding of the High Republic Era of the galaxy.
Related: Bob Iger Speaks: Next Disney ‘Star Wars’ Movies Finalized After ‘The Acolyte’ Cancellation
To be fair, Leslye Headland contributed a lot to that discussion, famously calling her show the “gayest“ Star Wars had ever been. There’s a somewhat disturbing idea out there that she needed to tone down her own authorial voice to appeal to the most toxic of fans, but none of that makes much difference anymore, as multiple news outlets are reporting that Lucasfilm is not moving forward with a second season.
According to Deadline, the massive cost of the Disney+ series, the comparatively lukewarm viewing numbers, and the controversy around The Acolyte just doesn’t justify itself to Lucasfilm. That is somewhat understandable on a business level, but it has to be said that, on an artistic level, The Acolyte didn’t really make the case for why it needs to be extended.
From the beginning, it was unclear what kind of show The Acolyte wanted to be. Would it be a dark examination of the moral culpability of the Jedi, or would it move away from centering the order as the only Force users in the galaxy? Would it be grimly serious in tone and dialogue, or would it let Manny Jacinto throw out some comedic one-liners? The Acolyte certainly didn’t know.
Out of eight episodes, two full entries were entirely flashbacks, basically forcing viewers out of the action and depicting misleading events while also not giving a POV of why it was unreliable.
While the idea of the truth “from a certain point of view” has been built into Star Wars since the beginning, that also relies on someone within the narrative depicting events in a certain way, as they see fit. In this case, it was simply the show omitting and obfuscating key details for no clear reason.
There might not be a better depiction of The Acolyte‘s inability to quite stick the landing than the appearance of Darth Plagueis in the final episode. In the version released on Disney+, the legendary Sith Lord appears midway through the episode, merely to basically look out of a cave and then…nothing. No release of dramatic tension, no further consequence to the plot, just a quick cameo.
According to Leslye Headland herself, there had been the idea that Plagueis would appear in the finale moments of the season, which would have instantly created a cliffhanger moment and a looming sense of dread for the characters we’ve been following. She told Indiewire:
“Plagueis was always in the finale, in every version. There was a version where he was the button of the finale [instead of Yoda]. You want to feel Osha’s triumph. You want to feel her joining forces with The Stranger. Plagueis stepped on [that moment].
“I was OK with having the cameo come so early if it meant I could wrap up these characters in a way that their final shot was not a, ‘And he’s been pulling the strings the whole time’ feeling.”
Instead, the choice was made to turn a moment of potential triumph into a tragedy and infuse the relationship between Osha and the Stranger with a ticking countdown until their inevitable battle. Instead, as Headland aptly describes it, it’s a cameo. Just that, and nothing more.
Related: ‘Star Wars’ Remake: ‘The Phantom Menace’ Hits YouTube
But what The Acolyte did not have in terms of consistent characterization, narrative clarity, or strong structural choices, it more than made up for in terms of its sheer determination to do something different.
More than anything else, that is what Star Wars needs at the moment: creators who will try new approaches to the franchise, who will center new characters, and bring troubling new ideas to a galaxy that has been bogged down in a single Jedi family’s drama for too long.
For years, Star Wars fans have depicted Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy as a malevolent figure hellbent on destroying their childhoods and Dave Filoni as a heroic figure who will restore balance to the franchise universe. But now that Filoni has taken full charge of the series, it is clear that all he wants to do is endlessly keep trotting out Ahsoka Tano, Bo-Katan Kryse, and Grand Admiral Thrawn.
As much as we all might love The Clone Wars, that’s a dead end. Kennedy has to deal with fan expectations, but at least she is actively bringing in people like Leslye Headland, who are not simply content to keep recycling the same old story beats.
The Acolyte might not have been a perfect show. Frankly, it might not have been even a very good one. But it tried to tell a new story with new characters in the Star Wars universe. While we might not need to see Osha and Mae back for another season, we definitely need more of that.
What other stories should be told in the world of Star Wars? Give us your pitches below!