The Acolyte showrunner Leslye Headland confirmed again that a second season of The Acolyte has not been greenlit by Lucasfilm.
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA – MAY 23: (L-R) Leslye Headland and Dave Filoni, Chief Creative Officer, Lucasfilm attend the launch event for Lucasfilm’s new Star Wars series The Acolyte at the El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood, California on May 23, 2024. (Photo by Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images for Disney)
In an interview with Nerdist, Headland was asked, “Do you know if you’re definitely getting a season two?”
She responded, “No! [big laugh]”
She then elaborated, “I have no idea. Well, not that I have no idea. I would say there are conversations. And I don’t know when that will happen. I don’t know when that decision will be made.”
Mother Aniseya (Jodie Turner-Smith) in Lucasfilm’s THE ACOLYTE, season one, exclusively on Disney+. ©.
READ: New Viewership Data For ‘The Acolyte’ Confirms Star Wars Fans Are Abandoning The Franchise
Headland previously claimed that she did not know if a second season would be in the cards. She told Entertainment Weekly at the end of June, “I’ll tell you my philosophy on first seasons. 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 to get a second season, and I don’t feel that’s a good idea.”
“I think you should put everything you can into the first season and give the audience a nice resolution that feels satisfying, but enough nods to mysteries that you would want to see a second season,” she explained. “So it’s a little bit of both. You don’t want to leave it so wrapped up that, like Obi-Wan or a standalone mini-series, that there’s no reason to watch a second season, but I think there’s enough stuff in the last few episodes that you would want to have answered.”
(L-R): Torbin (Dean-Charles Chapman) and Sol (Lee Jung-jae) in Lucasfilm’s THE ACOLYTE, season one, exclusively on Disney+. ©2024 Lucasfilm Ltd. & TM. All Rights Reserved.
Next, Headland was asked if there was any progress made on a possible Season 2, she replied, “I remember reading that Vince Gilligan in writing and doing the first season of Breaking Bad really didn’t plan on, ‘We’re getting seven more seasons, and this is what’s going to happen to Walter White.’ It was much more, ‘Here’s everything we got. We’re throwing everything at the wall.’ And then with the pickup, he mapped out, ‘Okay, here’s what’s going to happen over the course of however many seasons.’”
She then asserted, “So I took that approach with this. I threw everything into season 1, because who knows what’s going to happen?”
(L-R): Koril (Margarita Levieva) and Mother Aniseya (Jodie Turner-Smith) in Lucasfilm’s THE ACOLYTE, season one, exclusively on Disney+. ©2024 Lucasfilm Ltd. & TM. All Rights Reserved.
From there, Headland indicated she would need a break before potentially doing a second season. She also admitted a second season had not been greenlit yet.
She said, “And then I’d say there are four to five major mysteries and plot points that have to get hit in season 2, but until we get a proper pickup, I worry that spending a lot of time in that world — especially being in a period where I’ve worked so long on this project that honestly I’m exhausted by it coming out — to kind of jump right into like, ‘All right, season 2….’”
“It will probably be more that I know what needs to happen, and I know what the character development needs to be in order to hit the plot points and the character points for a second, third, or fourth season. So I look forward to working on that, but right now, I haven’t,” Headland concluded.
(L-R): Torbin (Dean-Charles Chapman), Sol (Lee Jung-jae), Jedi Master Indara (Carrie-Anne Moss) and Kelnacca (Joonas Suotamo) in Lucasfilm’s THE ACOLYTE, season one, exclusively on Disney+. ©2024 Lucasfilm Ltd. & TM. All Rights Reserved.
The show is not performing well based on a number of metrics. Nielsen recently released viewership data for the show’s two-episode premiere revealing it only garnered 444 million minutes watched.
Nielsen Top 10 Original Streaming Data for the week of June 3-9, 2024
For comparison, Ahsoka, which arrived on Disney+ in August 2023, had a two-episode premiere that had 829 million minutes watched. The total minutes watched between Ahsoka and The Acolyte’s premiere is nearly a 50% decline.
There is one big caveat. Ahsoka’s two episodes had a total runtime of 101 minutes compared to The Acolyte’s 82 minutes. However, even if you use Disney’s simple total minutes viewed divided by total run time, Ahsoka’s viewership comes out to 8.2 million views compared to The Acolyte’s 5.4 million. That’s a 34% decline.
(L-R): Sabine Wren (Natasha Liu Bordizzo), Huyang (David Tennant) and Ahsoka Tano (Rosario Dawson) in Lucasfilm’s STAR WARS: AHSOKA, exclusively on Disney+. ©2023 Lucasfilm Ltd. & TM. All Rights Reserved
It gets even worse if you compare it to The Mandalorian Season 3 premiere, which arrived on Disney+ in March 2023. Nielsen reported the one episode premiere garnered 823 million minutes watched. Like with Ahsoka, it is nearly a 50% decline in total minutes watched.
However, it gets even more bleak once you realize the premiere episode was only 37 minutes long. That means by Disney’s calculations it would be 22.2 million views. That’s a 75.6% decline.
(Center, L-R): The Armorer (Emily Swallow), Din Djarin (Pedro Pascal) and Paz Vizsla (Tait Fletcher) in Lucasfilm’s THE MANDALORIAN, season three, exclusively on Disney+. ©2023 Lucasfilm Ltd. & TM. All Rights Reserved.
READ: ‘Star Wars: The Acolyte’ Episode 6 Falls Off Top 10 Chart For Streaming Originals
The show completely fell off the Top Chart for Streaming Originals from Luminate for the week the show’s sixth episode debuted. As noted by X user NowItsKnown, The Acolyte had less than 282 million minutes viewed, which was the amount of minutes watched by the 10th ranked Presumed Innocent, which airs on Apple TV+.
28 June – 4 July 24 Luminate Streaming Originals#Netflix #BeverlyHillsCopAxelF has solid two day premiere.#DisneyPlus #TheAcolyte (Ep6) falls off chart. pic.twitter.com/vR0fux7j3h
— MAC (@NowItsKnown) July 5, 2024
The fact that it fell off the chart is telling, but it’s unclear if the show saw an actual decline week to week. The reason being is that Luminate reported that The Acolyte only brought in 232.2 million minutes watched the week its fifth episode debuted.
Given that the lowest show clocked in at 282 million minutes, it is possible that The Acolyte saw its viewership increase. However, this would defy the quickly forming trend of the show.
(L-R): Vernestra Rwoh (Rebecca Henderson) and Mog Adana (Harry Trevaldwyn) in Lucasfilm’s THE ACOLYTE, season one, exclusively on Disney+. ©2024 Lucasfilm Ltd. & TM. All Rights Reserved.
READ: Leslye Headland Admits ‘The Acolyte’ Is About Breaking “Down The Jedi As A Concept”
It’s likely viewership declined significantly given the total number of reviews on IMDb dropped by almost 40%. The total number of reviews per episode has correlated with Luminate’s viewership data week over week.
Episode reviews for The Acolyte on IMDb
Audience scores are also terrible for the show and nearly every week the Tomatometer score declines as well. The Audience Score currently sits at 14% while the Tomatometer score now sits at 81%.
Star Wars: The Acolyte Rotten Tomatoes scores
Given the show reportedly had an $180 million price tag, it’s hard to imagine that the show has covered its costs by getting new subscribers to Disney+ or even getting current subscribers to tune in. In the company’s most recent quarterly earnings report it shared that it had 54 million subscribers to Disney+ in the United States and Canada. Based on Nielsen’s numbers the show garnered around 5.4 million viewers. Disney calculates a view by dividing the total minutes watched by runtime. That’s only 10% of subscribers to Disney+.
Ahsoka nearly doubled that. Disney+ only had 46.1 million subscribers at the end of December 30, 2023. Ahsoka reportedly brought in 8.2 million viewers. That’s 17.7% of all subscribers in the United States and Canada.
Master Sol (Lee Jung-jae) in Lucasfilm’s THE ACOLYTE, season one, exclusively on Disney+. ©2024 Lucasfilm Ltd. & TM. All Rights Reserved.
What do you make of Headland once again confirming that the show does not have the greenlight for a second season?
