What does The Acolyte's demise mean for the future of Star Wars?

The Acolyte was a first for Star Wars television programming on many fronts. It was the first production for the small screen set in the High Republic era of history. It was also the first live-action Star Wars show to have a woman (Leslye Headland) showrunner, though The Bad Batch beat Acolyte to the punch on that front in terms of all Star Wars programming. This was also the first major Disney+ Star Wars show told in live-action after The Mandalorian to explore original characters not established in prior Star Wars media. Now The Acolyte has scored another far grimmer first for Star Wars Disney+ shows. It's the first live-action Star Wars show to get canceled (The Book of Boba Fett was a one-off miniseries).

Last night, the news broke that The Acolyte would not get renewed for another season despite Headland previously explaining that she had firm ideas for what future seasons would entail. Lower viewership for the show (undoubtedly part and parcel of a larger decline for 2024 streaming viewership also affecting recent Netflix original movies) undoubtedly played a heavy part in the show's demise. More pressingly, though, Disney has begun shying away from giving any of its major Disney+ programming multiple seasons. While the Percy Jackson show got another season, Willow, National Treasure: Edge of History, She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, and American Born Chinese all were canned after one season over the last two years. Bob Iger's return to Disney has included a severe limiting over just throwing hundreds of millions of dollars down a rabbit hole on streaming "content".

What does this mean for live-action Star Wars shows going forward? Well, for one thing, there'll undoubtedly be fewer going forward. Skeleton Crew begins its eight-episode run December 3, while a second Andor season drops sometime next year. However, a fourth Mandalorian season isn't happening anytime soon and the second Ahsoka season is years away from release. Back in 2022, we got three seasons worth of new live-action Star Wars programming (counting six of The Book of Boba Fett's seven episodes dropping in that year). It's doubtful those numbers will be duplicated going forward.

With two Star Wars blockbuster movies, including The Mandalorian & Grogu, set for theatrical release in 2026, Disney and Lucasfilm are now determined to get this franchise back to working on the big screen. That likely means that only one new season of Star Wars programming will drop each year, starting in 2025. Getting rid of The Acolyte reflects a desire to get this franchise back in theaters and Disney's larger shift away from 24/7 high-profile streaming programming. The company will undoubtedly still put out splashy Disney+ shows, but they'll be rarer events.

Does this mean the end of original new stories in the Star Wars universe? Well, we have Skeleton Crew and its new adolescent leads on the horizon (though that production's supporting cast reportedly cribs heavily from The Mandalorian/Ahsoka lore). James Mangold's proposed Star Wars movie will take audiences to the dawn of the Jedi, a time period never before explored in Star Wars media. For now, Lucasfilm does appear to have plans for further exploits in the Star Wars universe that aren't just about young versions of Clone Wars characters.

Unfortunately, the demise of The Acolyte and the predominately male leads of upcoming Star Wars projects do suggest a newly emerging larger pop culture trend: a shift away from diverse leads towards "safer" white guy protagonists. The Acolyte didn't need to be "protected" or given another season just because it had a Black protagonist or a queer creator. However, it's hard not to notice the future of nerd properties is shifting back to on-screen demographics that would make Ike Perlmutter squeal with glee.

James Gunn's new DC Universe has no women or non-white showrunners and directors hired right now. These incarnations of Superman, Lois Lane, Supergirl, and other characters are gearing up to be largely as Caucasian as the audience of a Weezer concert. Upcoming Marvel Cinematic Universe movies are ditching women of color directors incredibly quickly and preparing to shift everything around Robert Downey Jr. and Ryan Reynolds. Big summer 2026 blockbusters like an untitled Steven Spielberg sci-fi film, Masters of the Universe, and Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum will all have largely white lead casts. On and on the examples go on.

These thoughts aren't a plea for The Acolyte to get renewed. On the contrary, they reflect how we cannot turn to corporations or representation in pop culture for help. Marvel Studios, Warner Bros./DC, and Lucasfilm, all made cursory public nods towards "representation" from 2018-2022, but they still belong to capitalist organizations out to make money no matter what. Disney has reportedly censored queer elements from Pixar movies. Disney CEO Bob Iger made cruel comments about The Marvels director Nia DaCosta after that film's box office failure. New WarnerDiscovery brass has reportedly overhauled the company in the last two years to gut initiatives helping marginalized artists. As for Star Wars specifically, non-white artists associated with the franchise like Kelly Marie Tran and Moses Ingram have experienced relentless racist cruelty just for existing in this saga. Simultaneously, Bob Iger has publicly championed Disney as never advancing a political agenda.

Of course, he'd say that. As a rich cis-het white man, he doesn't experience the political hostility Ingram, Tran, John Boyega, and Amandla Sternberg (among others) have endured just for being a part of this galaxy far, far away. He can be a spectator in his mansion and minimize the horrors that persist in our modern world thanks to systemic racism.

The demise of The Acolyte doesn't signal itself "racism" or anything else on the part of Disney/Lucasfilm executives. Sometimes, show don't work out, especially programs like The Acolyte which garnered understandable criticisms about its pacing, tendencies to put mysteries above all else, and struggles with delivering episodic storytelling. However, this show crashing and burning does feel like it's part of a larger trend of Hollywood abandoning artists of color and other marginalized creatives. I

t's a phenomenon reflecting what's always been true: we cannot rely on corporations for quality art reflecting the real world and its many strains of humanity. Great queer art like D.E.B.S., Working Girls, The Watermelon Woman, Desert Hearts, Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Moonlight, and so many more were made outside of the studio system. This doesn't mean all queer representation in major studio movies and TV shows are bad or that it's "wrong" for you to love those forms of representation (I'm a pro-Blockers girly, for the record). However, such projects are anomalies in the larger pop culture space. The greatest future art from marginalized voices will not happen because of the "generosity" of Lucasfilm and Disney. It will be because of working-class artists working together to make something beautiful. Corporations like Disney continue to give up on works with diverse voices. But we cannot give up on them or each other. Support independent cinema or smaller TV shows from all walks of life. Give these productions the kind of long-term support that corporations with bottomless pockets like Disney clearly aren't capable of delivering.