If The Walt Disney Company and Lucasfilm thought their audience scores could get any worse following the first two episodes of the show, they received a rude awakening as the show’s audience scores across multiple aggregators has sharply fallen.
Mother Aniseya (Jodie Turner-Smith) in Lucasfilm’s THE ACOLYTE, season one, exclusively on Disney+. ©2024 Lucasfilm Ltd. & TM. All Rights Reserved.
Following the release of the first two episodes, the audience score on Rotten Tomatoes sat at 32% with an average rating of 2.1 out of 5.
Star Wars: The Acolyte Rotten Tomatoes scores
That score has now fallen to 20% with an average rating of 1.5 out of 5. Even the critic score has declined from 93% to 85%.
Star Wars: The Acolyte Rotten Tomatoes scores
On IMDb the score initially sat at a 5.1 out of 10 albeit the unweighted mean was 4.4 and the plurality of votes were a 1 out of 10.
The Acolyte review scores on IMDb
The score has now fallen to 4.0 out of 10 with the unweighted mean a 3.5 out of 10. Almost a majority of all reviews are a 1 out of 10 as well.
The Acolyte review scores on IMDb
If you look at the reviews per episode, it clearly shows that viewers did not like the third episode. The first episode received a 5.8. The second episode received a 5.6. However, the third episode received a 3.7.
Of note, the third episode has also received less reviews indicating that a number of people tuned out of the show following the first two episodes and chose to not even watch the third episode. The number of reviews between the first and third episode declined by nearly 32%.
The Acolyte review scores on IMDb per episode
The only site where the score has not changed is on Metacritic. It still sits at a 4.1. It initially had 100 positive reviews, 19 mixed reviews, and 166 negative reviews.
The Acolyte User Score on Metacritic
The series still has a User Score of 4.1 but there are now 354 positive reviews, 61 mixed reviews, and 599 negative reviews.
The Acolyte User Score on Metacritic
These negative reactions come in the wake of an extremely soft opening debut as far as viewership. Data analytics company Luminate reported that the first two episodes only garnered 210 million minutes watched in the United States between May 31st and June 6th.
For comparison, according to Nielsen, Ahsoka’s two-episode premiere brought in 829 million minutes viewed when it premiered last year.
Nielsen “Overall” Streaming Ratings for the week of August 21 to August 27, 2023
In fact, The Walt Disney Company even released data claiming The Acolyte only garnered 4.8 million views in its first day and just 11.1 million views globally after five days of streaming. The company measures a view by total stream time divided by runtime. Given that The Acolyte’s total runtime was 73 minutes and 55 seconds the total global minutes viewed was around 820 million minutes.
That’s correct. Ahsoka had more minutes viewed in the United States compared to The Acolyte’s entire global minutes viewed. The show is an unmitigated disaster.
Financial analyst Valliant Renegade aptly describes the show’s viewership as an “absolute trash fire.
What do you make of audience scores getting even worse for The Acolyte?
I think people were misinformed on witches that weren’t lesbians at all since there was not even a kiss in that episode.
To reiterate on Twitter, “characters do not need to kiss to be in a same-sex relationship.” Also, how else can you understand the IVF metaphor between two women? They even have an argument that mirrors the argument between parents over the future of their children.
I don’t know, like the Mother and the woman that carried the twins never seemed like it was a romantic relationship but more of platonic one only because the Zabrak member cared for the twins because she carried them into term and was like a “mother” to them. As for it breaking lore, Anakin is still a divine birth while the twins were like an experimental birth with using the Force. Two different things and that’s how I at least believe in.
It seems to me that you are simply looking for the explanations that are most convenient for you in order to portray things in the right light.
Not really. I just look at things with a neutral mindset and see what works and what doesn’t.
You’re just making excuses because you refuse to accept that Star Wars is a dead brand.
Well it’s not, arguably, and this episode wasn’t the one that killed Star Wars which someone on this site agreed with me on and he also doesn’t like me at all. Why do I need to accept it’s dead when that’s subjective at best? Hell I’ll ask you this: Why is it that everytime I try to be neutral on things and your response is to be all piss and vinegar because I don’t agree with you? You can’t be this much if a hothead, Tony, to not accept a different opinion without thinking it’s a shill/bot saying it. I know this site is now more or less Anti Disney, but that doesn’t mean some counter arguments are the equivalent of being a Shill hellbent on destroying Western Civilization.
If you really looked at things that way, you wouldn’t ignore that the Jedi calls them her “mothers” back in the first episode. Not even to mention how you demonstratively depict conditions and push back the gates to avoid obvious conclusions.
Dude come on now. I get that you want to like this stuff. Heck I want to like Star Wars again too. But use some context clues.
What kind of context clues? I know SW isn’t in the best of places or all of Disney right now, that’s understandable and I agree with that. What I’m saying/asking is why is it that I can’t give credit where it’s due on the very few positives Disney does or be objective with counter arguments without everyone going hot headed towards me or that I’m a shill/bot when I’m not?
fair enough – I agree that people who maintain a respectful contrary opinion should be dealt with courteously. We should be the opposite of the leftists who insist on shutting people down. I think the main issue people have with Disney star wars is the continuous intent to ‘subvert’ and reshape the franchise to suit the tastes of an extremely small minority that they belong to. Previously, the culture place a boundary on the tastes of the so-called ‘creatives’ in hollywood. With the shift in the balance of power and constant propagandizing from to social media and legacy media complicity with it they have become unrestrained. Once they began to make movies for themselves instead of the majority audience they’ve been failing consistently.