Season 1 of The Acolyte has been unusual. The manufacturing values are nice, the performances glorious, the motion freakin’ superior. However now that the finale has aired, the response is fairly detrimental throughout the board as a result of it does not actually add up. In different phrases, we do not actually know what’s truly occurring on this collection. We watched a bunch of stuff occur, and it was cool to see, however it’s not possible to know what any of it means as a result of we do not have sufficient info.
This text is freed from any spoilers for Star Wars: The Acolyte. However you can learn a spoiler-filled dialogue of The Acolyte season finale right here if you would like to learn extra.
In that sense, The Acolyte is a present that requires a second season, or else it will find yourself as an totally pointless and massively costly streaming paperweight. Whether or not it “deserves” one other season primarily based on rankings or high quality is a separate dialogue and probably not related. What’s at difficulty right here is Disney’s and the Star Wars model’s relationship with its fans–there’s no belief there in any way, and for good motive. Nevertheless it is doable to repair it. Disney simply desperately must reveal some follow-through, one thing it hasn’t proven a lot of inside Star Wars or Marvel lately.
Have a look at the corporate’s observe document with Star Wars. The Drive Awakens was an enormous success when it was launched, and was very well appreciated, and Rogue One received comparable acclaim a yr later–though the field workplace receipts have been lower than half what TFA had earned. Then, issues received dicey. The Final Jedi proved extraordinarily divisive, after which no person in any respect appeared to love Solo, which was an outright bomb on the field workplace, or The Rise of Skywalker, which garnered the worst evaluation proportion ever for a live-action Star Wars film on Rotten Tomatoes, and was simply the second to earn a Rotten ranking after The Phantom Menace.
The live-action Star Wars TVverse took it from there, and it has been horrible as usually as its been good. Nevertheless it additionally gave us Andor, which would be the single-best piece of live-action Star Wars media ever launched (although it will be just a few years earlier than we are able to really decide that). It is indisputably the most effective a part of Disney’s Star Wars portfolio, not less than. However Andor is an outlier–it’s a whole story even earlier than Season 2 arrives, and folks prefer it as a result of it is a effectively informed story, not as a result of they acknowledge Star Wars stuff in it.
Andor apart, the issue with the Star Wars state of affairs is identical one which Disney is coping with within the Marvel Cinematic Universe: It is began many new story threads and left them dangling, and has adopted up on only a few of them, as a substitute chasing its viewers’s whims in circles every time it could actually. The sequel trilogy was at warfare with itself, with The Final Jedi purposely abandoning and subverting the principle threads from The Drive Awakens, just for The Rise of Skywalker to show round and do the identical factor again at The Final Jedi. As particular person films they’re all high-quality. However as a unit, they’re utter nonsense–a sequence of frantically pivoting towards stuff they assume the followers will like, and within the course of alienated an enormous chunk of the viewers.
The TV model of Star Wars hasn’t been any higher about that–The Mandalorian morphed primarily into a brand new season of Clone Wars throughout Season 3, simply as Ahsoka was functionally a brand new season of Rebels. The precise plot of The Mandalorian–Mando protects Child Yoda from Imperial hunters–is only a aspect plot now, and it is beginning to really feel like Bo-Katan from Clone Wars is the actual title character on that present. The brand new storylines have been sacrificed for the sake of continuous these outdated ones from animated collection, as a result of that is what they assume the fanbase needs (and it is what some people need, however there are different audiences right here, too).
However the frequent difficulty is that the powers-that-be on Star Wars have at all times prioritized tuning these exhibits for shallow, in-the-moment enjoyment solely, on the expense of depth or substance. Often that has meant making one thing that appears slick and is stuffed with acquainted Star Wars imagery and in any other case do not make you assume at all–that’s precisely what The Drive Awakens was, in spite of everything. However The Drive Awakens was the primary new Star Wars film in ten years, making a stage of pleasure they might by no means replicate as soon as they received into yearly releases.
So now, after eight seasons of live-action Star Wars TV prior to now 5 years, we want some depth. Season 1 of The Acolyte has little or no, since all of its mysteries stay mysteries and we do not actually know something about what is going on on–there are dangling threads everywhere. It was enjoyable to look at, however it’s so stuffed with holes that it could actually’t maintain any water. That is a state of affairs that Season 2 might repair by filling within the gaps and telling a whole and coherent story. And it could be an enormous enhance for the entire Star Wars franchise if Disney allowed that to occur.
There’s been a severe detrimental cumulative impact from the franchise’s shallow storytelling–it’s been creating a variety of ennui, our emotions of goodwill fading with every new season of TV that is simply OK and does not add something to our understanding of the collection as a complete. If Disney cancels The Acolyte, that development will proceed for an additional yr, and people could have a more durable time coming again for the subsequent one, and Andor will proceed to be seen as an exception quite than an indication of hope that the franchise could be on the right track.
Or, they might renew The Acolyte, and proceed the story they’ve began, and take all of it the way in which to its conclusion with out overloading the method with arbitrary makes an attempt at fan service. They may do what they did with Season 1 of Andor: Get the hell out of the way in which and let their creators make an excellent and entertaining present, whereas additionally telling a coherent story.
Proper now it is a problem of belief. The followers have none to spare for Disney with the present state of its two greatest franchises. It looks like each time they sense any form of hassle with any undertaking, they try to pivot it in a route they consider has extra mass enchantment, with little regard for whether or not the plot is impacted or fully damaged by the changes–each franchise undertaking not often is sensible even in its personal context, and the massive image by no means works. The extra stuff like that that you simply watch, the more durable it turns into to get pleasure from any of it, even should you do not consciously understand it till after your curiosity has light fully and also you moved on to different stuff.
I haven’t got all of the solutions for the way Star Wars can get its crap together–Lucasfilm has some massive institutional issues, like all massive firms do, and it takes quite a bit to get out of those habits. However canceling The Acolyte now will solely trigger new rifts, as a result of the individuals who spent the previous seven weeks watching and speaking about this collection could have wasted their time, and there will not ever be a lot motive for anybody new to test it out, and the fanbase will collectively belief Disney slightly bit much less.
However renewing The Acolyte and letting the artistic minds behind the collection end out the story they started may very well be a spark. If Season 2 is sweet and is ready to salvage the story, all can be forgiven, and possibly people would have the ability to take it as an indication that Disney itself actually does care in regards to the high quality of its Star Wars merchandise along with the cash it earns from them. It would not be that dissimilar to, say, the disastrous launch of Cyberpunk 2077, a recreation that launched in a blatantly unfinished state. The devs at CD Projekt RED put within the money and time to repair it, then dropped a extremely nice DLC to cap it off, and now that recreation is seen as an all-time nice open-world RPG–but it took years extra work than they anticipated.
There isn’t any motive why The Acolyte could not have an arc of its personal like that. Showrunner Leslye Headland is effectively outfitted to do it, even. However Disney and Lucasfilm are going to need to be courageous.