Leslye Headland, the showrunner for The Acolyte, recently cast doubt on the idea that the show will get greenlit for a second season.
(L-R): Director Leslye Headland and Lee Jung-jae on the set of Lucasfilm’s THE ACOLYTE, exclusively on Disney+. ©.
Speaking with Entertainment Weekly following the release of the show’s fifth episode, Headland said, “Something that I’ve noticed is first seasons will end on what should have been the break into act two. It feels like everyone’s really expecting [their shows] to get a second season, and I don’t feel that’s a good idea.”
She then added, “I threw everything into season 1, because who knows what’s going to happen?”
Despite Headland being unsure if the show will get renewed for a second season, she did inform the outlet that she has “four or five major mysteries” she’d like to explore if it does.
Leslye Headland attends the UK Premiere of Lucasfilm’s ‘The Acolyte’ at Odeon Luxe Leicester Square in London, on May 28, 2024. (Photo by StillMoving.Net for Disney)
The show has not performed well on any metric. On Rotten Tomatoes, the show has a 14% Audience Score, it is the lowest of any Star Wars film or television show.
Star Wars: The Acolyte Rotten Tomatoes scores
It fares slightly better on IMDb. It has a 3.3 out of 10 rating. However, the unweighted mean is 2.9. The majority of all reviews are a 1 out of 10.
The Acolyte review scores on IMDb
Not only are audience scores and user reviews in the dumpster, but the show’s viewership is piss poor as well. The Walt Disney Company officially revealed that the show’s first two episodes only garnered 11.1 million global views after the first five days of streaming on Disney+.
Given The Walt Disney Company calculates a view by total stream time divided by runtime, the global minutes viewed only comes to 820 million minutes. That’s 9 million minutes less than Ahsoka’s minutes watched metric as reported by Nielsen. The big kicker is that Nielsen only tracks in the United States. That means Ahsoka’s US viewership was bigger than The Acolyte’s entire global viewership.
(L-R): Qimir (Manny Jacinto) and Mae Aniseya (Amandla Stenberg) in Lucasfilm’s THE ACOLYTE, season one, exclusively on Disney+. ©2024 Lucasfilm Ltd. & TM. All Rights Reserved.
Analytics firm Luminate appeared to confirm just how disastrous viewership of The Acolyte is. As reported by Variety, the show’s first two episodes only brought in 210 million minutes watched in the United States. That’s 619 million minutes less than Ahsoka.
Luminate Streaming Originals: Television Ratings for the week of May 31-June 6, 2024
The show had a slight bump the next week. Minutes watched increased to 380.5 million. However, that was still far below Ahsoka’s 487 million minutes watched the week its third episode debuted.
Nielsen “Original” Streaming Ratings for the week of August 28 to September 3, 2023
By its third week and the debut of episode four, the minutes watched significantly regressed to 262 million minutes watched.
Luminate Streaming Originals: Television Ratings for the week of June 14-June 20, 2024
Not only do the metrics look bad, but Headland appears to have lined up at least one project outside of Star Wars.
Deadline reported earlier this week that Headland will make her Broadway debut with Second Stage Theater production for her play Cult of Love. It will be directed by Trip Cullman. The play is expected to begin performances at the end of November at the Hayes Theater.
(L-R): Amandla Stenberg , set PA Taylor Young, director Leslye Headland and director of photography Chris Teague on the set of Lucasfilm’s THE ACOLYTE, exclusively on Disney+. ©2024 Lucasfilm Ltd. & TM. All Rights Reserved.
What do you make of Headland’s comments regarding the future of The Acolyte?
