Showrunner Leslye Headland Reflects On The Acolyte’s Cancellation — Sends Message Of Hope To Fans

The live-action Star Wars series The Acolyte premiered on Disney+ back in 2024, focusing on the dark side of the Force and joining a fast-growing list of Star Wars series on Disney+ that includes The Mandalorian, Andor, and The Book of Boba Fett. The series premiered with 4.8 million views on its first day, becoming Disney+’s biggest launch of 2024 and reaching 11.1 million global views within its first five days. With an all-star cast led by Amandla Stenberg, along with a handful of other big names like The Matrix star Carrie-Anne Moss and Squid Game’s Lee Jung-jae, the show seemed destined to be around for several more seasons but was abruptly canceled after viewership dropped significantly in the weeks that followed as it became a target of a “review bombing” campaign, with critics attributing it to a highly toxic segment of the fanbase that reacted negatively to the show’s focus on diversity. Although Disney maintains that the budget was the major deciding factor, as noted by Variety and Forbes.

Now, just a year after Disney pulled the plug on the show, showrunner Leslye Headland has opened up about its cancellation and the surrounding toxicity that the creators dealt with from the jump. She told The Wrap that the writing was on the wall early on.

“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.’

Headland argued that The Acolyte may have been a bit too ambitious because it was not rooted in a place in the Star Wars timeline fans were familiar with, and that was a major risk for the studio.

“It was a new part of the timeline. It was all new characters. It was a part of the lore where you couldn’t use a Storm Trooper, you didn’t have the reference of the politics and war that Tony Gilroy has brilliantly exploited in such a genius way in “Andor.” But all that iconography and all those visual references are original trilogy references, and our references were the High Republic novels and the publishing initiative and then the prequels, specifically with the lightsabers.”

Despite its negativity and fan backlash, Hegland said she repeatedly encouraged her team, throughout its production, to take a little more creative risk than usual and to put intense focus on original visuals and storytelling never before seen or told in Star Wars.

“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.”

The writer, and executive producer has always maintained that she’s a Star Wars fan herself and has paid attention to the negative fan and online creators’ reactions, especially from those she felt were making money from criticism, which she believed negatively influenced studios.

“These guys I’ve known for years and years. So when I got the information from others about what the weather report was, there was this real concern from friends of mine or co-workers of mine that saddened me. I also was like, ‘I know who these guys are.’”

She continued, “You don’t have to tell me who’s talking about it or how bad it is online, I know exactly who they are. I supported them on Patreon. There are some of them that I respect, and there are some of them that I think are absolutely snake oil salesmen, just opportunists. Then, of course, there are the fascists and racists.”

It wasn’t only negativity and backlash that led to the show’s demise, there was also a financial discourse surrounding the production. Reports revealed a budget of over $230 million, which raised questions from executives about its sustainability. Headland pointed out that the series originated during a very different era of streaming.

“I think that the streaming bubble is now bursting, and I think that started around COVID. It just started to feel like the amount of money that was going to have to be spent on eight to 10 episodes of television, that business model dwindled,” she continues. “It started to become something like, well, what are we pivoting to? There hasn’t been something that’s been ushered in to take its place.”

Headland also shares a belief that the fan-created content and discussions surrounding Star Wars will become more culturally significant than the official Star Wars media itself. It’s the fans, the passionate (and sometimes toxic) online conversations and communities that have a greater impact on the cultural conversation than the actual films, shows, and books.

“It made me start to think, rather than these fans are toxic, or this thing is being mean to me, it made me think more that the content being made about Star Wars will ultimately be more culturally impactful than actual Star Wars. I believe we’re headed into that space.”

Despite the series’ cancellation, several positive perspectives on the show’s future legacy exist. Creators and some fans maintain a positive long-term outlook for the show’s potential to be re-evaluated and appreciated over time.

Significant fan pressure to bring back The Acolyte, with fans creating online petitions, using hashtags like #SaveTheAcolyte, and writing letters to Disney+ to express their support, shows appreciation for the show’s unique period setting, storyline, its diverse cast and the people involved in its creation. This positive outlook can only strengthen the shows future popularity.

Talks of continuing the series in some form, possibly as an entirely new show, have endured as a result, and Headland has recently shed some light on what a second season of the show might have looked like. She noted that the creative team had already mapped out the thematic direction for a follow-up.

According to Headland, as reported by SFF Gazette, the new book, The Art of The Acolyte, reveals that Qimir, played by Manuel Luis Jacinto, and his story continued beyond a single season and that he was to become the first Knight of Ren, the Sith cult that Kylo Ren led (and ultimately destroyed) in the sequel trilogy.

“It was in the design of the character, as well as knowing that we were going to introduce Darth Plagueis, who has to end up with Palpatine as his apprentice. Following the Rule of Two – a precept that limited the Sith to just two at any given time, a master and an apprentice – one way to keep it going it is if the Stranger is the first Knight of Ren, part of a Sith-adjacent cult that we know eventually survives.”

Despite all the online negativity and the cancellation, Headland has always remained positive about her experience working with Lucasfilm and highly praises the creators in bringing her Star Wars story to life. She still believes it never really had the chance to reach the audience it was truly built for.

“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.”

As she put it: “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.”

The Acolyte was ambitious, unique, and different, positioned in a part of the Star Wars timeline that many fans had only explored through the pages of novels and comic books. It was a mystery-thriller that took viewers into a galaxy of shadowy secrets and emerging dark-side powers in the final days of the High Republic era. One I hope is explored again.

Even though it was deeply scrutinized, the ideas it explored and the risks it took will likely shape how other future projects are handled at Lucasfilm moving forward.

What do you think? Leave a comment below and May the Force be with…

_{“I am the type of Star Wars fan that doesn’t even have a favorite movie,” Headland told reporters at the Rise of Skywalker premiere in 2019. “I just want to live in the Star Wars universe continually.”}