By George & Josh Bate
Lucasfilm have opted not to continue development on the second season of The Acolyte, per Deadline.
The Acolyte premiered in June with a two-episode debut, showcasing Amandla Stenberg’s characters and a handful of Jedi before the events of The Phantom Menace. The eight episode season came to a conclusion in mid July.
Deadline reports that The Acolyte’s viewership was strong at the front end of the season, with 4.8 million views in its first day. This holds the record for biggest series premiere on Disney+ in the year 2024. Viewership rose to 11.1 million globally in its first five days of streaming, and ranked #6 in Nielsen’s Top 10 originals chart with 488 million minutes viewed.
Despite that early success, The Acolyte reportedly declined in viewership in the following weeks. The series dropped out of the top ten entirely after its third week, and returned only for the finale at #10. That concluding episode, which now looks to be a series finale (despite the many open-ended plot threads and teases of future seasons from showrunner Leslye Headland), gained 335 million minutes streamed, which is reportedly the lowest of any Star Wars live action series finale.
The Acolyte is a mystery-thriller set 100 years before the beginning of the prequel trilogy, and focuses on mysterious dark-side villains in a galaxy filled with Jedi during the High Republic era. Amandla Stenberg plays both Osha and Mae, twins who found themselves on opposite sides of the conflict. Osha eventually abandoned the Jedi for good after discovering the truth behind the demise of her mother and the coven that she was raised in, and joined the Sith Lord known only as The Stranger (or Qimir, the alias he uses when posing as a mindless petty criminal). The season finale teased the future Osha and The Stranger, played by Manny Jacinto, as well as their impending confrontation with Darth Plageuis, the famous Sith Lord mentioned in 2005’s Revenge of the Sith.
The Acolyte also starred Lee Jung-jae, Jodie Turner-Smith, Dafne Keen, Rebecca Henderson, Charlie Barnett, Dean-Charles Chapman and Carrie-Anne Moss.
All 8 episodes of The Acolyte are still streaming on Disney+.
Source: Deadline