How The Acolyte Made Star Wars' Split Fandom Even More Divided

One of Disney+’s original Star Wars shows ended up making the divide between fans that had been growing since 2017 even wider. Star Wars, as a franchise, has never had a particularly unified fan base. There was intense backlash to the prequel trilogy as it came out and fans of the Star Wars Expanded Universe hated The Clone Wars when it came out. Those divisions in the fan base, however, healed with time, and both the prequels and The Clone Wars are now widely beloved.

In 2017, however, Star Wars fans were divided once again, and that rift still hasn’t healed nearly nine years later. That was when The Last Jedi hit theaters, and it ripped the franchise’s viewers in half. Half of the fan base, along with most critics, lauded The Last Jedi for its daring and subversive choices with Luke Skywalker and the legacy of Star Wars as a franchise. The other half hated it for weakening Luke while raising Rey up and not meshing well with the story The Force Awakens set up.

A vocal portion of the Star Wars fans who hated The Last Jedi also fed upon the growing rift caused by the “culture wars.” Even in The Force Awakens, Rey was seen as a “Mary Sue.” When The Last Jedi made her even more powerful while depicting Luke Skywalker, a heroic male character, as a checked-out hermit hiding from a fight, some fans used it as fuel for the fire.

Star Wars never really recovered from The Last Jedi. Fans did agree that shows like The Mandalorian and Andor were great, and that movies like The Rise of Skywalker were bad, but there was still a rift from The Last Jedi. Half of the fan base wanted to ignore the sequel trilogy entirely and lionized the prequels, while the other half wanted more out of Rey’s story and appreciated how The Last Jedi allowed Luke to grow as a character.

Then, in 2024, Star Wars released The Acolyte and tore the still-unhealed wound wide open once again. The Acolyte would prove to be wildly controversial and divisive. It exasperated the “culture wars” surrounding Star Wars and its growing interest in centering women and people of color, as the show was created by a gay woman and featured a very diverse cast led by a Black woman and a Korean man.

Many fans, however, had very legitimate grievances with The Acolyte. The show’s pacing, for example, was very inconsistent, with some episodes feeling overly long while others were jam-packed with action. The central mystery of what happened on Brendok, as well, proved to be underwhelming once it was revealed. Many fans were also upset that a series that was originally marketed as being a show about the Sith ended up being a story about fringe Force users and a pair of twins.

This group of fans who hated The Acolyte also claimed that the series somehow broke Star Wars canon. Aspects of the story, from Ki-Adi Mundi’s appearance 100 years before The Phantom Menace and Mae and Osha being born from the Force when Anakin Skywalker was previously the only known person to be born that way, were cited as evidence that showrunner Leslye Headland didn’t respect the franchise.

The Star Wars fans who loved The Acolyte, on the other hand, enjoyed it for what it was. Many fans enjoyed the tension of Master Sol’s dark past and his relationship with both Mae and Osha. They were also willing to overlook many of the things other fans cited as “breaking canon,” and they were able to see the potential of the series had it been continued. The Acolyte also had some legitimately great aspects, such as Manny Jacinto’s Stranger and the action choreography.

In the end, The Acolyte proved to be too divisive to continue. Disney and Lucasfilm canceled The Acolyte after a single season and cited the show’s large budget ($231 million) as the reasoning for the decision. Given the ending of The Acolyte, which was filled with unanswered questions and teases for stories to come, it seems the divisiveness of the show ate into its viewership.

If Star Wars fans were divided in the wake of The Last Jedi, they were completely divorced in the wake of The Acolyte. The conversation about people of color and women in Star Wars devolved even further, fans who were already more fond of the prequels doubled down on their devotion to the way Star Wars was before Disney, and it seemed there was no common ground left. Star Wars was fractured but whole after The Last Jedi, but the fan base was essentially cut in half by The Acolyte.

Why The Acolyte Season 2 Could Have Healed The Divide

The most disappointing part of The Acolyte‘s divisiveness is the fact that it could have been exactly what Star Wars needed to reunify its fan base. There was quite a bit in The Acolyte that Star Wars fans could have found common ground on. The Stranger was almost universally liked, the lightsaber fights were some of the best ever seen in live-action, and the show’s exploration of the High Republic era gave viewers a fresh perspective on Star Wars.

The Acolyte also had an incredible amount of potential that would have appealed to both camps of Star Wars fans. The Acolyte briefly teased Darth Plagueis‘ involvement in future seasons, which would have appealed to fans of both the prequel trilogy and the Expanded Universe. Plagueis also would have given The Acolyte season 2 a chance to explore what the Sith were doing in the years before Palpatine’s rise to power and The Phantom Menace.

Darth Maul and The Stranger Custom Star Wars Image

Star Wars’ New Show Is Everything The Acolyte Should Have Been

Maul – Shadow Lord seems like the Star Wars series The Acolyte wanted to be, and could have been, and some key changes been made with the 2024 show.

Fans of The Acolyte also had a lot to look forward to before it was canceled. Osha and the Stranger’s love story was left in an uncertain but very promising position, it looked like the show was going to dive even deeper into the corruption that would eventually destroy the Jedi Order, and there were still so many avenues to explore in the High Republic’s first live-action appearance. The Acolyte had so many mysteries that fans of the show were excited to solve.

All of this potential could have made The Acolyte a unifying force for Star Wars. Those who hated The Last Jedi and those who loved it could have finally found common ground in The Acolyte. It also could have proved that both groups’ desire for the future of the franchise, one focused on the prequels and one focused on expanding beyond the Skywalker Saga, could have coexisted. If The Acolyte had gotten a proper chance with another season, it could have brought the Star Wars fan base back together. Instead, it divided them further.