A Time to Get and a Time to Lose

Well, so much for that. Last week the Hollywood trade press has revealed that The Acolyte is not going to receive a second season. I am saddened by this news.

I don’t think The Acolyte was the best thing ever, but I thought it had a compelling take on Star Wars lore and its narrative had me coming back for more each episode. It’s a shame Disney denied it the chance to grow its audience and find its creative groove. It deserved better.

I don’t know why Disney ended the show, and you shouldn’t believe anyone on the internet who claims to know. All I can say for sure is that it’s about the money. Star Wars productions don’t come cheap, and I gather The Acolyte was more expensive than other shows. Still the speed at which Disney gave it the hook is heartbreaking.

It goes without saying that not every great show is great or popular out of the gate. Star Wars fans need look no further than The Clone Wars, which debuted to poor reviews. I myself had written it off, and only returned to it in later seasons. I think there is value to the argument that The Clone Wars redeems the prequels. At the very least, it gave us Ahsoka and Rex, two of Star Wars’ most beloved supporting characters. and an absolute humdinger of a final arc.

Likewise, Breaking Bad, one of the very best shows of the “prestige era” of television launched to mediocre ratings, but AMC stuck with it and gave the show time to connect with more viewers and become a cultural landmark. Or consider Star Trek: The Next Generation which was close to unwatchable for its first two seasons. Had it been given the same treatment as The Acolyte, the legacy of what kicked off arguably Star Trek’s best period would’ve instead been nothing more than “Encounter at Farpoint” and “Angel One.”

No, The Acolyte was not as good as Breaking Bad, but it was better than the best eight episodes of the first two seasons of Next Generation. And maybe in time it would’ve become the best Star Wars thing ever. We’ll never know.

It’s funny. The promise of the streaming era was that it would be the best of all possible worlds for viewers and creators alike. Studios could produce shows without having to worry about ratings. Viewers could watch and discover shows at their own pace. But somehow, these media companies have only managed to iterate their platforms into cable, but worse. One of the reasons I ended my Netflix account is that they started cancelling shows before I could even start watching them, just weeks after their premiere. It’s shocking to see Disney do the exact same thing. It is simply not possible for every show to be both fully formed and massively popular right out of the gate.

We’re seeing the big studios doing this everywhere now. It’s ridiculous that it’s more profitable for these companies to erase completed movies and series from existence as tax write offs or to avoid paying creators than to let them see the light of day. Something is very broken in the entertainment industry right now. The attitude that “If it’s not a blockbuster, it’s a failure”, feels like a dead end to me.

Is this the end of The Acolyte’s story? Probably not. This is Star Wars after all. Nothing is ever really gone. I’m sure there will be novels and comics by other creators that will carry on Osha and Mae’s story, but it’s not quite the same, is it? I loved many aspects of the old Expanded Universe, but its storylines were mainly driven by novels, and words on a page just never quite capture the full feeling of Star Wars for me. It is a shame that Leslye Headland and all the talented writers, directors, designers, cast and crew who made the show won’t be able to continue their story.

I don’t want to give any oxygen to the worst corners of “fandom” who rained hate on the show’s cast and crew. The Star Wars they want is demonstrably worse than any era of Star Wars we’ve ever had. They can screw off right into the sun as far as I’m concerned.

If you didn’t like The Acolyte, that’s fine. Not everything has to be for everyone. Star Wars should be allowed to be big enough that it can serve different tastes. I don’t imagine there is much overlap between the audiences of Andor and Young Jedi Adventures. That’s a good thing. If Star Wars is truly to be modern folklore, then it has to be accessible to everyone, not just the idyllic version of the eight year olds that only ever existed in our heads.

I enjoyed The Acolyte and I’m glad Leslye Headland and company got to tell us the sad story of Master Sol, and, for a little while, show us some truly thrilling lightsaber fights and take us to an unseen corner of the Star Wars universe.