In 2019, the Star Wars franchise entered the live-action TV space for the first time with The Mandalorian, and for the most part, this corner of the franchise has been successful. However, The Acolyte ranks as one of its few misses, with the High Republic-set series being canceled after just one season. Leslye Headland, The Acolyte’s creator and showrunner, wasn’t surprised when she learned about the cancelation, and over a year later, she explained why she still has no regrets about her time working on the show.
Why Leslye Headland Wasn’t Surprised By The Acolyte’s Cancelation
The Acolyte premiered to Disney+ subscription holders on June 4, 2024, and the finale aired on July 16 of the same year. While the series received generally favorable reception from critics, it was much more polarizing among the fans. Viewership also steadily declined as the season went on, so by the time Leslye Headland learned The Acolyte wouldn’t return for another season, it didn’t come as a shock to her. When The Wrap asked her it was “viewership or creative” that was chiefly responsible for the cancelation, she answered:
It was kind of both. I was not surprised by it. I think I was surprised at the swiftness of it and the publicness of it. I was surprised by how it was handled. But once I was getting particular phone calls about the reaction and the criticism and the viewership, I felt like ‘OK, the writing’s on the wall for sure.’
Besides legitimate critiques being directed against The Acolyte, the Star Wars series was also the target of review bombing and trolling, particularly against its lead actress, Amandla Stenberg. But even looking past the critical side of things, The Acolyte’s viewership week to week failed to measure up to how fellow Star Wars shows like The Mandalorian, Andor and Ahsoka performed. Headland continued:
The viewership was a little muddled for me, because — and this is my understanding — with Star Wars, you’re not just measured within the marketplace that you happen to be in at that time, you’re measured against every other Star Wars show. We hit the Nielsens a couple times, not every week or anything like that, but a couple times it poked through. I feel like for a launch of a first season show that was trying different things, I think it could have been worth it to allow the audience it was meant for to find it. But that wasn’t up to me. So I fully respect the decision, even if I’m sad about it.
To be sure, this isn’t the first Star Wars project on the numbers side of things to disappoint in the Disney era. 2018’s Solo: A Star Wars Story only made $393 million worldwide, making it a box office bomb. In The Acolyte’s case, Disney and Lucasfilm felt the show hadn’t performed strongly enough to warrant moving forward with Season 2. That disappointed Leslye Headland, but she also understood the rationale.
Why Leslye Headland Doesn’t Regret Working On The Acolyte
As someone who enjoyed The Acolyte for the most part, I’m still annoyed those lingering plot threads from the Season 1 finale won’t be resolved, especially now that we know that Manny Jacinto’s The Stranger was meant to foreshadow the Knights of Ren. As far as the people who didn’t like The Acolyte go, Leslye Headland acknowledged that the show was “always a major risk” since it featured all new characters and was set in a period of the timeline never explored onscreen before. She added:
I also think that any gripes creatively with the show are completely valid. That’s people’s reaction. It’s usually their reaction to their own reaction. But like I said the show was always a risk. It’s the old adage of the first one through the wall is the bloodiest. And this is very similar to coming back to your question about the company, it was just very much, ‘Let’s shoot for the sky.’ Let’s just go for it.
Despite The Acolyte turning out as a one-and-done affair, the showrunner looks back on her time working on it fondly. As a longtime Star Wars fan, she welcomed contributing to a galaxy far, far away and remains passionate about the franchise, saying:
So I have no regrets, and I’m absolutely obsessed with Star Wars. I still am, and I love my show, and I know that it was wonderful. And honestly, the designers that worked on the show are more responsible for it — because of what Star Wars is, creating that world is honestly harder than creating the narrative and the dialogue and the characters, that stuff I’ve done. It’s more hiring the right people, and all of those people were brilliant.
The Acolyte’s time came and went, but there are still upcoming Star Wars TV shows to look forward to in the near future. Both Ahsoka Season 2 and Star Wars: Maul – Shadow Lord are expected to premiere on the 2026 TV schedule. We also still have yet to learn if Skeleton Crew will return for a second season.
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