The Acolyte was a tone-deaf interpretation of the Star Wars IP, made all the worse by its abysmal writing.

At the same time, it's gaslighting a majority of the Star Wars fanbase — by telling them that they themselves have essentially misunderstood their own childhood fandom.

The Acolyte is an act of cultural vandalism, and good writers everywhere need to call it out for what it is.

Mainly I think people are attacking this show with credible arguments that the writing was simply atrocious.

I say this as someone who was already in adulthood when the prequels came out. These movies, while prone to clumsy dialogue and execution, at least understood how to establish stakes, frame character and sell the audience in on a philosophical/moral conflict.

The Acolyte is qualitatively worse in every regard — and there must be people inside Lucasfilm who absolutely know it.

It don't believe The Acolyte has 'ruined Star Wars', if only because a broad spectrum of the fanbase will simply refuse to acknowledge it to BE canon. I'm sorry if fans of this show find that somewhat deflating, but The Acolyte really is extremely poor.

At this point, executive stakeholders at Disney will need to pump the breaks in order to shield valuable IP like Yoda.

Huh. Now what is going on here? Collider is running with the exact same narrative - and making the same critical editorial omissions in the process.

Let’s try and give this article a bit more transparency.

The chart referenced reflects online engagement, not viewing figures.

I’ll post the same thing I did on Collider:

Regarding viewership numbers, the show's two-episode premiere had disappointing ratings. Episode 3 then declined, tracking lower than Ahsoka but higher than Andor.

The two-episode premiere amassed 488 million minutes of total viewing time, which dropped to 370 million minutes for Episode 3.

However, unlike Andor, which experienced consistent interest and a rise in later episodes due to positive word of mouth, Nielsen figures indicate that The Acolyte saw a significant drop in audience retention for Episode 4. It failed to make the top ten, which is a considerable setback in of return on investment.

The show has galvanised a hardcore fanbase who understand that this is a good reason for Disney to cut their losses and discontinue the show.

Counter to this, disparate parts of the real fanbase - everyone from original trilogy purists, the prequel cohorts, and even those sympathetic to the sequel movies - have united in their collective disdain for the show. That’s where the engagement is coming from of course, and that IS a backlash of business critical proportions.

And yet, the real problem for The Acolyte is the sentiment held by general audiences - which is a complete indifference to it existing one way or another.

I really do think Star Wars has reached an inflection point, which rests on whether The Acolyte gets greenlit for a second season, or mercifully not.