The showrunner behind the divisive Disney+ and Star Wars series, The Acolyte, has spoken out about her plans for its second season and her reaction to the show’s cancellation.
I think the only non-divisive thing you can say about the 2024 Disney+ series Star Wars: The Acolyte is, funnily enough, that it was quite divisive.
The Star Wars fanbase at large was already on the back foot by the time previews and trailers for the show started to drop, and things only proceeded to get worse as more episodes were released.
Of course, we all know how things ended for The Acolyte. Mere weeks after the final episode of season one came out, the show was unceremoniously cancelled by Disney. This was, supposedly, due to low viewership numbers, but reports of the series going over budget likely did little to help its chances of renewal.
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The show did pretty well with critics however, earning itself a 79 percent critics score on Rotten Tomatoes, and (following its cancellation) it's clear that it amassed a die-hard fanbase.
Talks of continuing the series in some form, as potentially an entirely new show, have endured as a result, and showrunner Leslye Headland has cast some light on what a second season of the show would have looked like.
In an interview with The Wrap's Adam Chitwood, Headland discussed how 'surprised' she was with how Disney handled The Acolyte’s cancellation, and her desire to focus on Manny Jacinto's character Qimir for the second season.
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“My show runner and I had a lot of ideas going into Season One, so we definitely were thinking about that, specifically with Manny Jacinto’s character”, Headland explained.
“We always knew that Lee-jung Jae was going to be the emotional anchor of the first season, watching the deterioration of that father figure
"So we had already thought ahead and thought about what type of relationship we wanted to look at in the second season. We had talked about all of that from a thematic and character standpoint, but in terms of actual narrative, there were only a couple sign posts that we knew we wanted to hit.”
Sadly (depending on who you ask), Headland doesn’t imply that a second season, or even an official follow-up, seems to be in the works in any way.
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She states that she “fully” respects Disney’s decision to cancel the show, which is an incredibly mature response to something she slaved away on for a long period of time.
It sounds like the fans of The Acolyte are going to have to make do with all those young adult tie-in novels that Disney keeps releasing. For the time being, at least.
Topics: Disney, Lucasfilm, Star Wars, TV And Film, The Acolyte