'The Acolyte' Has Been Canned By Disney+

The story of The Acolyte will not continue, with Lucasfilm opting not to proceed with a second season of the Star Wars offshoot starring Amandla Stenberg, sources tell Deadline.

Word of the decision comes more than a month after the eight-episode first season of the series from creator, director, executive producer and showrunner Lesley Headland wrapped its run on Disney+.

'The Acolyte' was truly a bizarro series. It is almost as if, before any given scene, the crew spun a wheel to decide whether or not it was going to get a lick of quality. One incredibly intense, technical swordfight move might be followed up 3 seconds later with the dumbest looking wire fight movement. An intense dialogue sequence will be undercut with a "he's right behind me, isn't he!". A great performance by Manny Jacinto will give way to a stupid ewok dude throwing a tantum. It was truly maddening. 

I think the biggest fault with this series, similar to 'House of the Dragon' S2 in a way, all lies at the top with the show-runner. Leslye Headland didn't seem to have a cohesive runway for this series planned out which meant we got the same sequence of events run through seemingly 3 separate times without much of a payoff. And by focusing on so many characters, it left me, as a viewer, not giving a fuck at all about the two main characters. On top of that, there are just bizarro, canon-busting scenes like introducing a memory wipe force power. Just a massive mess. 

I do think there are some positives that hopefully make it into other Star Wars series, though. Episode 5 might be one of the top Star Wars episodes across all of their series combined. Manny Jacinto really got to show off a new side of him that was amazing and I wouldn't mind seeing his character in a different series. Parts of the fighting and production work were also top notch and would look great grafted onto a successful series. 

It was mostly a stinker, but we will always have episode 5.