By Karl Puschmann
Everyone involved was only ever on the attack. Before the show aired its creators and stars came out guns blazing. Photo: Lucasfilm Ltd.
The Acolyte was supposed to be the chosen one. The much-hyped Star Wars series was supposed to bring balance and unity back to Star Wars fans. It was supposed to be a hit that competed with streaming rivals like Netflix's Stranger Things, Prime Video's The Boys or Disney's own The Mandalorian.
It was supposed to offer a new hope. Instead, it offered a weekly dose of cringe and nonsense. This week it was cancelled.
It's been fascinating to watch. Not the show itself, which proved to be car-crash viewing, but rather the entire discourse surrounding the show.
Everyone involved was only ever on the attack. Before the show aired its creators and stars came out guns blazing. After it aired its critics and haters retaliated in kind. There was no common ground. Only new fronts to battle on week after week after week. The show's star even fired off a rap diss track at the show's detractors halfway through the season. This amateurish effort can be considered less of a clapback and more of a war crime against music.
It must be acknowledged that those she addresses in the song do exist. A cursory - but strongly ill-advised - YouTube search for the show will bring up an army of goons dogpiling on the series for pushing the 'woke agenda', for having a Black female lead and for being written by a white lesbian.
These loudmouth haters are wrong. The Acolyte was terrible, but not for the reasons they spout while pushing their ignorant, offensive and regressive agenda. Their yapping can be ignored but the show's bigger issues can't be shamed away by a wispy diss track.
So what went wrong? It's almost a case of pick your poison - which, in one of the show's more ill-advised plot points, a Jedi does when he commits suicide. As one of many New Zealanders impacted by suicide, I'm not convinced that needed to be depicted in the same show as space wizards and a walking gopher in overalls.
The Acolyte was at pains to be the 'dark' and 'edgy' Star Wars show for 'cool' adults, but its attempts at being bad-ass only ever ended up looking try hard at best, or laughably cringe at worst; à la the third episode's chanting witches.
In theory, a Star Wars series told from the villain's perspective is an interesting idea. One successfully pulled off in various Star Wars novels, comics and video games. But The Acolyte was poorly executed at every conceivable level. From the bewildering, borderline nonsensical scripting to the show's weird pacing, average acting and lousy costume design. There are very few things you can point to as good about The Acolyte, bar its fight choreography.
One of the only good things about the series was its fight choreography. Photo: Lucasfilm Ltd.
Disney spent an eye-watering NZ$292 million on the eight episodes of the show's first season, ending on a double whammy cliffhanger that introduced a beloved character and a long-awaited villain in its closing moments. This grand finale, which was a spectacle of ridiculousness and irrational character choices, was the lowest-watched closing episode of any of Disney's Star Wars shows. People turned off The Acolyte in droves during its run and not even the pull of Yoda could bring them back.
Under Disney's stewardship Star Wars, once a pop culture juggernaut, has been pulled into a black hole of public disinterest. It desperately needs a momentum boost to escape the gravitational force that's reeling it in.
The Acolyte did not provide it. Instead, a mere month after its final episode aired, it was terminated. The show's atrociously low viewing figures too dismal to ignore or hope to recover from.
It was supposed to offer a new hope. Instead, it offered a weekly dose of cringe and nonsense. This week it was cancelled. Photo: Lucasfilm Ltd.
Facing this trend of dwindling audiences, Lucasfilm needs to course correct. And quickly. It will be interesting to see if they can. The bigger question is whether the cancellation of the show signifies a period of self-reflection and refocus at Lucasfilm or if it was an unemotional, purely financially-driven decision and it remains business as usual.
That answer won't become clear for a while. But it's a perverse irony that it took the death of The Acolyte to finally offer Star Wars fans that faint glimmer of a new hope.