Despite Phenomenal Episode 5, ‘The Acolyte’ Rating Keeps Dropping, Why?

‘Star Wars: The Acolyte’ is perhaps the most controversial Star Wars release ever. The show had a heated response to it even before release due to some controversial statements made by the cast and crew.

Headland’s emphasis on the “gayness” of the show certainly did not help with fans who are annoyed with today’s DEI politics and feel like the shows are being written around social agenda and messaging instead of the other way around.

Following the release the show experienced both review-boosting and review-bombing. After episodes 3 & 4 were released things took a turn for the worse. The show recorded an 86 % critics score and a 14% when it comes to audience score according to Rotten Tomatoes.

As far as other aggregators go, the show has an abysmal 3.3 rating according to 69K reviews. I have to admit I was a bit bored with ‘The Acolyte’ mostly due to the fact that nothing happened in episodes 3 and 4. Episode 5 alleviated most of the grievances I had with the show, well except for the horrifically bland protagonist and horribly written dialogues.

The action was great, I liked that Disney dared to go into such a brutal direction by eliminating most of the main cast in a single episode, and I honestly expected that the score would recover, however, keep in mind that this is my subjective opinion based on a subjective opinion of other fans, and most of the reactions I’ve seen around social media to the episode were positive.

This ultimately didn’t happen, the show now has a worse score, currently sitting at 84% when it comes to critics and 13% when it comes to audience. There is some hope on IMDb, as episode 5 titled “Night” is currently the highest rated sitting at a 6.7 approval rate.

So what does this mean, why wasn’t a solid episode enough to recover at least some of the ratings? Well, the answer is simple, catastrophic PR response to fan criticism certainly didn’t help, and both sides of the argument fueled this catastrophe. Disney needs to learn how to listen to fan feedback and how to talk to its loyal fan base.

‘The Acolyte’ is far from the best show Star Wars ever released, and we will certainly have to wait for the last three episodes to be released to draw a final conclusion, the majority of the show is (in my opinion) bad, but Episode 5 really did show signs of turning things around, especially if this level of action and suspense is maintained until the end? What do you think? Let us know in the comments below!