Report: Leslye Headland’s ‘The Acolyte’ Cancelled After Abysmal Finale Ratings

A new report details that Lucasfilm and The Walt Disney Company cancelled Leslye Headland’s The Acolyte series in the wake of Nielsen reporting the season finale had abysmal viewership numbers.

Deadline’s Nellie Andreeva reports, “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.”

This report comes in the wake of Nielsen releasing its data for the week The Acolyte’s series finale aired. The show only managed to garner 335 million minutes watched. That was less than the 2-episode premiere, which brought in 488 million minutes watched.

READ: ‘The Acolyte’ Finale Viewership Is 41% Below ‘Ahsoka’s’ Finale And Over 50% Below ‘Andor’s’ Finale

Nielsen’s viewership numbers reflect a significant decline in reviews per episode of the series on IMDb. The first episode received 26,000 reviews while the finale only received 11,000.

Not only did the show receive poor viewership, but those who did watch did not like it. The show has a 4.1 out of 10 with the plurality (45.8%) of all reviews being a 1 out of 10.

This report also confirms a rumor from WDW Pro who indicated that Lucasfilm would not be moving forward with the show at the end of July.

READ: Rumor: Lucasfilm Has No Current Plans To Develop A Season 2 Of Leslye Headland’s ‘The Acolyte’

He said at the time, “Said source tells me that Leslye Headland does not, as of right now, have a contract for a season two of The Acolyte. Said source tells me that following the finale of Season 1 and the results that may have been coming in weeks ahead — this decision may have been coming in weeks ahead of the finale — there are no current plans to develop a season two.”

Pro added, “That could change. Kathleen Kennedy can always make that decision as long as she has a contract, which we believe she has a contract up until October of this year. And it may be continued past that, but that’s when the current contact would end. But Kathleen Kennedy could go ahead and approve that, but as of right now we are told there are no plans, no movements, there is nothing in development for a season two of The Acolyte.”

He concluded, “My source tells me that everything in Season 1 indicates that they did plan on doing a Season 2 especially with the way the show ends, but as of right now that continuation of the story seems to be on indefinite hold, indefinite pause.”

The show performed extremely poorly compared to previous Star Wars Disney+ series. As noted by X user NowItsKnown, the show’s finale performed worse than every single live-action Star Wars show released on Disney+ before it including Ahsoka, Andor, Obi-Wan Kenobi, The Book of Boba Fett, and The Mandalorian.

Ahsoka’s finale back in October 2023 saw its viewership hit 575 million minutes watched. The Acolyte’s finale viewership is 41% less than Ahsoka’s.

Similarly, Andor’s finale brought in 674 million minutes watched. The Acolyte’s viewership is over 50% less than Andor’s.

Each #DisneyPlus #StarWars show season finale draws lower viewership than the one before.
Not including #TheMandalorian S3 finale, but resuming with Ahsoka’s.#BookOfBobaFett-885 Feb 22#ObiWan-860 June 22#Andor-674 Nov 22#Ahsoka-575 Oct 23@wdwpro1 @ValliantRenegad @KinelRyan pic.twitter.com/zo4FxUAI3I

— MAC (@NowItsKnown) November 5, 2023

READ: ‘The Acolyte’ Showrunner Leslye Headland Justifies Further Destroying Yoda’s Character By Pointing To Dave Filoni’s ‘The Clone Wars’

It gets even worse when you compare it to Obi-Wan Kenobi and The Book of Boba Fett. Obi-Wan Kenobi had 860 million minutes watched for the week of its finale. The Acolyte’s viewership is over 60% less than Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Similarly, The Book of Boba Fett’s viewership had 885 million minutes watched. The Acolyte was over 62% less than The Book of Boba Fett.

The Mandalorian Season 3 had 1.012 billion minutes watched. The Acolyte performed 66% worse than it.

It’s likely that showrunner Leslye Headland knew the show had atrocious viewership as she had resorted to begging viewers to launch social media campaigns in an attempt to convince Lucasfilm and The Walt Disney Company to greenlight a second season.

She was asked by Collider’s Maggie Lovitt, “Shifting gears, one of the most popular questions that I got to ask you from Twitter was: What do fans need to do to ensure that we get a Season 2?”

Headland responded, “Truly, any online support and love you can send the show. It’s a little tricky because of the way that the internet works, but if you enjoyed the show and you want to see more of the story, any support that you can give the show on social media platforms would be super helpful.”

She continued, “Sending love to the cast, too. You’ve seen what Hayden [Christensen] went through. He’s getting the love now, but give the love now if you enjoyed the performances. Even if you were kind of like whatever on the show, if you enjoyed the performances, get on their social media, let them know that you love them, or that you support them or that the performances were great.”

READ: ‘The Acolyte’ Showrunner Leslye Headland Explains Why She Views The Sith Villain As An Avatar For Herself

From there Headland stated, “Encourage your friends to watch the show. A lot of my work has been word of mouth. We were talking about the review bombing, so just telling people don’t pay attention to the IMDb score.”

She then stated, “If you enjoyed it, tell people. It kind of seems that it’s sort of basic, but I think what’s interesting is that, nowadays, if you like a show, you’re very rarely going to go online and be like, ‘I liked this show!’”

Lovitt then stated, “You just watch it and move on.”

Headland reiterated, “You watch it, you move on, maybe you mention it to somebody over dinner and be like, ‘Oh, I just binged this show. It was fun. Lee Jung-jae is an awesome actor.’ It usually comes up that way, as opposed to going online and saying, ‘I love this show.’ So, if you did love the show, then pivot and be appreciative…”

“By the way, I know this is already happening, even though I’m not online,” she added. “People have been sending me fun tweets and beautiful artwork, and all of the ship comments, and I’m absolutely loving it. I know it’s out there. But if you aren’t doing it, I would encourage you to do it and support the show. So, thank you.”

Now that The Acolyte has been scrapped, the next big question is if Lucasfilm will pull a Willow and impair the costs of the show and yank the entire series off of Disney+.

What do you make of this report that The Acolyte has been cancelled?

NEXT: Showrunner Leslye Headland Claims Sol Forgiving Osha In ‘The Acolyte’ Was Reinforcing The Patriarchy