The Acolyte Was Critically Acclaimed and Beloved By Fans. Disney Canceled it Anyway
Lucasfilm Ltd.
Queer fans are speaking out after Disney canceled the Star Wars series The Acolyte after just one season.
Set 100 years before the start of the Star Wars prequels, the show starred Amandla Stenberg as Osha and Mae, two Force-sensitive twins who find themselves on opposite sites when Jedi Master Sol (Lee Jung-jae) investigates a killing spree targeting other Jedi.
In addition to its twisty premise, The Acolyte featured a refreshing amount of queer talent on both sides of the camera. Created by queer showrunner Leslye Headland and starring queer actors like Stenberg, Charlie Barnett, and Rebecca Henderson, the show also introduced Mae and Osha’s two mothers (played by Jodie Turner-Smith and Margarita Levieva), who led a witchy space coven.
Still, despite receiving a 78% fresh critics’ score on Rotten Tomatoes and attracting a passionate online fanbase, The Acolyte was relentlessly review-bombed on the aggregator site — it currently has an 18% average audience score at the time of writing. In late June, Forbes reported that in just three weeks, the series received over 25,000 total user scores, which is more than all three seasons of The Mandalorian combined.
This level of ire directed at one of the only live-action Star Wars series centering women, people of color, and queer people — which started before the show even premiered after an interview in which The Wrap’s Drew Taylor posited that The Acolyte is “arguably the gayest Star Wars” went viral — is notable, to say the least. During an era in which Disney and Lucasfilm are largely focusing on shows featuring pre-existing characters and IP, like The Mandalorian and Ahsoka, many queer viewers couldn’t help but feel like the company’s decision catered to online trolls rather than its massive, far more diverse fanbase.
“I don’t really have anything to say about the Acolyte cancellation that hasn’t already been said, but I just want to reiterate how disappointing it is that women/poc/queer people are constantly fighting tooth and nail to simply exist in the Star Wars fanbase,” one fan tweeted.
Another viewer summed up their feelings toward Lucasfilm by sharing a choice quote from Turner-Smith’s queer witch character: “The galaxy is not a place that welcomes women like us.”
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