On August 19, The Acolyte was announced to be canceled, just weeks after its first season ended on Disney Plus. While critics have been positive about the show, a significant portion of Star Wars fans have rejected it outright for a number of reasons, and there are other legitimate complaints as well. Now, the show’s (dual) star Amandla Stenberg has finally spoken out about the cancellation.
According to them (via Instagram), this is “not a shock” because “we’ve faced an overwhelming amount of vicious criticism since the show was announced, when it was just a concept and no one had even seen it.” They’re absolutely right about the apparent hate campaign against the show, regardless of its actual quality, but that doesn’t even begin to explain why it was canceled.
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Last week, co-star Lee Jung-jae was more restrained in his comments: “To be honest, I hope that things might change in the future… because you never know what’s going to happen. So personally, I really hope that we can see more stories in the second season of Leslye.” Of course (Spoilers ahead)He doesn’t care That He hasn’t played the character in quite some time, ever since his death at the hands of his former apprentice Osha at the end of Season 1. That being said, he’s understandably disappointed with the ending of a show he spent so much time working on.
Stenberg’s comments also went beyond the hate they and the rest of the cast and creator Leslie Headland received: “While I’m certainly very sad that the show was canceled and sad that we couldn’t get people more invested in it, I still feel very relieved and happy that I was able to experience it and that people loved it and that people responded so enthusiastically.” Oisin Kuhnke of iGamesNews felt that The Believer eventually reached a cool place, even if it took a long time to start fully kicking in. I have to agree with that sentiment, as I didn’t really start to appreciate the show (warts included) until halfway through.
Jeff Sneider, a well-known Hollywood insider who is pretty reliable when it comes to Lucasfilm and Star Wars, also shared his knowledge of The Believer’s cancellation, saying the decision had mostly to do with low ratings after the premiere and the extremely high production costs of eight episodes. Long story short: it was a big gamble for Disney and Lucasfilm, but it didn’t live up to the high expectations.
Of course, the worst in the Star Wars fandom will take the show’s cancellation as a personal victory over The Awakeners and all that garbage, but in the end, The Acolyte was just an okay show with a lot of cool ideas that just took too long to get really interesting and paid its ultimate price. Now we can only hope that The Stranger and Osha’s story can be completed somehow. We’ll even take a comic series!
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