Last week there was a lot of gnashing of teeth and tearing of clothes because of the cancellation of The Acolyte by Disney. The star Wars The show will not exist beyond the first season and it is unclear if any of the characters or storylines from season 1 will be continued elsewhere. I think The Stranger was a good character and would be happy to see him back in another capacity. Darth Plagueis was spotted towards the end of the season and I would certainly like to see more of him.

But the show itself wasn’t a hit, mainly because it was poorly written, riddled with plot holes, the acting of the various leads was very inconsistent, and it looked cheap despite its huge cost. And while some outlets want to portray the cancellation as a victory for the “toxic dudebros” in the fanbase (as if there couldn’t be a woman who didn’t like her), The Acolyte) and others claim that Disney won’t try new things anymore because of its failure, but in my opinion there are two real reasons for this:

• The show was far too expensive and did not attract enough visitors to justify the cost.
• The film was far too expensive and did not receive enough recognition from critics and the wider fan base.

Both factors have a common theme: The Acolyte simply cost much, much too much and this investment was not rewarded with huge audience numbers like The Mandalorian or critical acclaim like Andor.

On Reddit, user JarJarJargon has the numbers for each Disney+ star Wars show:

This is a really interesting table as it shows us a lot of important details about the success or failure of each of these series. The Acolyte is the second most expensive show on the list ($180 million) after Andor (US$250 million) but that is just the total amount. If you look at the cost per minute of footage, The Acolyte cost a whopping $671,641 per minute to produce. Andor cost only $529,661 – about $250,000 less per minute – thanks to its longer, more substantial episodes and 12 episode count. No other star Wars The series received one season with 12 episodes and very few episodes in all star Wars were so long. As you can see in the graph, Andor runs a total of two and a half hours longer than Ahsoka and is not much shorter than the first two seasons of Mandalorian combined. And at least with Andor, You can see where the money went.

The Acolyte cost much more and performed much worse than all other Disney+ star Wars series and that is why it was cancelled. If it had been very popular, with audience numbers closer to The Mandalorian than to Andor, it would almost certainly have been renewed. But the critics’ reaction was lukewarm and the fans’ reaction was mostly very negative, and viewers didn’t come to see it. I don’t think this was due to the show’s diversity or the new setting in the High Republic, but rather the general impression that this show was poorly executed, with a gimmicky twin plot that never worked, some truly miserable moments like the witch chants, and the death of the biggest star in the first five minutes.

I think The Acolyte had potential and maybe the second season would have fulfilled that potential, but I’m still baffled that Disney would put so much trust and such a budget in the hands of someone with very little experience. It reminds me of the Amazon train wreck Rings of Power, also a series with a huge budget and showrunners who have very little experience.

Disney needs to try new things, and star Wars must continue to be diverse—Andor is a great example of a very diverse star Wars show that this has worked remarkably well – but the company also needs to be smart and prudent about who it entrusts to lead projects. I will discuss this more in a future post, but the main problem with star Wars Since Lucasfilm joined Disney, there has been a lack of a clear vision or strategy for the franchise. This has been evident since the frustrating sequel trilogy and continues to haunt all things star Wars til today.