By George & Josh Bate
After mostly staying out of the spotlight for the year since the cancellation of The Acolyte, series creator Leslye Headland finally divulges more about the divisive Star Wars series in a new interview with The Wrap.
Headland explains that making The Acolyte “was always a major risk.”
“It was a new part of the timeline. It was all new characters. It was a part of the lore where you couldn’t use a Storm Trooper, you didn’t have the reference of the politics and war that Tony Gilroy has brilliantly exploited in such a genius way in “Andor.” But all that iconography and all those visual references are original trilogy references, and our references were the High Republic novels and the publishing initiative and then the prequels, specifically with the lightsabers.”
For many, the risk didn’t pay off as The Acolyte was met with mixed reviews from fans and critics. “I also think that any gripes creatively with the show are completely valid,” Headland remarked. “That’s people’s reaction. It’s usually their reaction to their own reaction. But like I said the show was always a risk. It’s the old adage of the first one through the wall is the bloodiest.”
Headland addressed what her experience was like seeing the show be attacked by people in the media, including those in Star Wars media.
“I was not online,” Headland said. “However, I am a “Star Wars” fan, which means I have always been, since the launch of YouTube, part of the “Star Wars” recap/criticism/lionization fandom community. These guys I’ve known for years and years. So when I got the information from others about what the weather report was, there was this real concern from friends of mine or co-workers of mine that saddened me. I also was like, “I know who these guys are.” You don’t have to tell me who’s talking about it or how bad it is online, I know exactly who they are. I supported them on Patreon. There are some of them that I respect, and there are some of them that I think are absolutely snake oil salesmen, just opportunists. Then, of course, there are the fascists and racists. So it runs a gamut. It isn’t just one thing or the other.”
Headland continued, “So in some ways I wasn’t surprised, and then in other ways I was disappointed. I think you always do that when you create something, it’s just that “Star Wars” is on a massive level of visibility.”
In a surprising remark, Headland said the reaction to The Acolyte taught her, not that fan are toxic, but something else entirely.
“It made me start to think, rather than these fans are toxic, or this thing is being mean to me, it made me think more that the content being made about “Star Wars” will ultimately be more culturally impactful than actual “Star Wars.”
When the show was cancelled just weeks after the finale aired, Leslye Headland says she “was not surprised by it.”
“I think I was surprised at the swiftness of it and the publicness of it. I was surprised by how it was handled. But once I was getting particular phone calls about the reaction and the criticism and the viewership, I felt like “OK, the writing’s on the wall for sure.”
Headland stated that the understanding of the show’s viewership “was a little muddled” for her. “With Star Wars, you’re you’re not just measured within the marketplace that you happen to be in at that time, you’re measured against every other Star Wars show.”
With Darth Plagueis making a cameo in the finale and Mae and Qimir teaming up, The Acolyte certainly left off on a cliffhanger. Headland revealed that she had started to develop ideas for Season 2 before the show was canceled. “My showrunner and I had a lot of ideas going into Season 1, so we definitely were thinking about that, specifically with Manny Jacinto’s character,” said Headland. “We always knew that Lee-jung Jae was going to be the emotional anchor of the first season, watching the deterioration of that father figure. So we had already thought ahead and thought about what type of relationship we wanted to look at in the second season. We had talked about all of that from a thematic and character standpoint, but in terms of actual narrative, there were only a couple sign posts that we knew we wanted to hit.”
Ultimately though, Headland said she has “no regrets” about the show.
“I’m absolutely obsessed with “Star Wars.” I still am, and I love my show, and I know that it was wonderful.”
We at Star Wars Holocron and The HoloFiles also think the show was wonderfully. While some of its storytelling could have been tighetened up, we found the series to be epic, intriguing, oddly romantic, and badass (it’s hard to find cooler lightsaber battles in the past 20 years than what we find in The Acolyte).
Despite the official cancellation of the series, The Acolyte has lived on in several books and (hopefully) will one day be revived as a full-fledged television show again.