The Acolyte showrunner Leslye Headland claims that negative audience reviews of her Star Wars show are “review bombing.” However, she previously claimed she was “sad” that the show was being dismantled.
The Stranger (Manny Jacinto) in Lucasfilm’s THE ACOLYTE, season one, exclusively on Disney+. ©.
Back on June 20th, Headland informed The Hollywood Reporter, “It makes me feel sad that a bunch of people on the internet would somehow dismantle what I consider to be the most important piece of art that I’ve ever made.”
Now, in a recent interview discussing the show’s sixth episode with Collider, Headland is claiming that the negative reviews are “review bombing.”
Headland stated, “Oh, yes. Everybody knows what review bombing is like. Truly when the show first came out, my publicist was like, ‘OK, with the review…’ I was like, ‘Does anybody take that seriously anymore?’ Perhaps the average… I understand the point of it, which is that the average viewer would look at the site and say, ‘Oh, the user review is really low.'”
(L-R): Director Leslye Headland and Lee Jung-jae on the set of Lucasfilm’s THE ACOLYTE, exclusively on Disney+. ©2024 Lucasfilm Ltd. & TM. All Rights Reserved.
She continued, “But I think that, if you’re in the Star Wars fandom, I think you already know what review bombing is. So I guess if you’re totally new to the fandom and you’re considering watching the show, it could affect you.”
“But I also think that my work in the past has been very word-of-mouth anyway, so I don’t know if it… I think that because behind the scenes, we all know what it is — it’s not that it’s not concerning — but I think it’s pretty expected. I would say,” she concluded.
LONDON, ENGLAND – APRIL 07: Leslye Headland onstage during the Acolyte studio panel at the Star Wars Celebration 2023 in London at ExCel on April 07, 2023 in London, England. (Photo by Kate Green/Getty Images for Disney)
The show currently has a 14% Audience Score on Rotten Tomatoes with an average rating of 1.3 out of 5.
Star Wars: The Acolyte Rotten Tomatoes scores
It has a 3.5 out of 10 on IMDb. The unweighted mean for the show is currently a 3.1. The majority (56.2%) of all reviews are a 1 out of 10.
The Acolyte review scores on IMDb
Not only are the reviews abysmal, but so is the show’s viewership. According to Luminate data share by Variety, the week that the show’s fifth episode debuted only brought in 232.2 million minutes watched. This is the worst week aside from the show’s first week, which only brought in 210 million minutes.
The show peaked in its second week with 380.5 million. However, it significantly declined to 262 million minutes watched in its third week. Viewership data for its fifth week when the show’s sixth episode debuted has not been made public yet.
Luminate Streaming Originals: Television Ratings for the week of June 21-June 27, 2024
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The show’s viewership is way down compared to Ahsoka. Ahsoka’s two episode premiere brought in 829 million minutes as reported by Nielsen compared to The Acolyte’s 210 million as reported by Luminate.
While Ahsoka declined the week of its third episode to 487 million minutes and The Acolyte increased to 380.5 million, Ahsoka still had over 100 million more minutes viewed compared to The Acolyte.
Ahsoka’s fourth episode hauled in 459 million minutes compared to the 262 million minutes of The Acolyte. The fifth episode of Ahsoka raked in 577 million minutes compared to the 232.2 million for The Acolyte. That’s a 59.7% decline.
Sabine Wren (Natasha Liu Bordizzo) in Lucasfilm’s STAR WARS: AHSOKA, exclusively on Disney+. ©2023 Lucasfilm Ltd. & TM. All Rights Reserved.
Looking at the the show’s fifth episode even if you factor in both show’s run times, The Acolyte is performing far worse than Ahsoka. The Acolyte’s fifth episode has a run time of 34:05 while Ahsoka’s fifth episode had a run time of 51:44.
If you do a simple total run time divided by the episode’s run time, Ahsoka has around 11.3 million views while The Acolyte has 6.8 million. That’s nearly a 40% decline.
Based on the data available, the negative reviews are not review bombing as Headland claims, but are indeed legitimate negative reviews. Not only do they appear to be legitimate negative reviews, but viewers are not tuning in to any more episodes indicating their dislike of the show.
(L-R): Jedi Padawan Jecki Lon (Dafne Keen) and Mae Aniseya (Amandla Stenberg) in Lucasfilm’s THE ACOLYTE, season one, exclusively on Disney+. ©2024 Lucasfilm Ltd. & TM. All Rights Reserved.
What do you make of Headland’s claim that the negative reviews are individuals “review bombing?”
NEXT: Leslye Headland Admits ‘The Acolyte’ Is About Breaking “Down The Jedi As A Concept”
