Renew or De-canonize ‘The Acolyte’? 57,000 Fans Want It Renewed, While 518 Signed the Petition to Remove It from Star Wars Canon

‘Star Wars: The Acolyte’ has recently been under the media spotlight, but not for positive reasons. Following 8 episodes, the show was canceled. The exact reasons why were never revealed by either Lucasfilm or Disney but insiders claim that it had everything to do with high budget and low viewership.

Even before its release and cancelation, the show was highly controversial, and quite frankly due to the state of the show no one was surprised that it was ultimately canceled.

Even the show’s star Amandla Stenberg who portrayed twins Osha and Mae was not surprised that the show has been dropped following “bigotry, vitriol and hatred.”

Now as much as ‘The Acolyte’ showcased that if you ignore a product long enough it’s eventually going to be pulled and discontinued, it also showcased that quite a number of fans were ready to support the show, at least when it comes to social movement that it started.

A few days after news of the cancelation broke to the media, a petition was started on Change.org to renew the show, at the moment of writing this article more than 57,000 fans signed the petition.

Such stunts worked in the past with other shows. Fans would gather online and some other studio would pick up the show. It’s extremely unlikely that Disney would be willing to sell the IP, so the next option is for fans to finance the show themselves. Considering a bloated budget that stands at $180M, this seems unlikely even with a massive crowd-funding campaign.

The third option is that the studio truly does renew the Acolyte, but considering Disney’s recent losses in practically all of their franchises, it’s truly going to take some convincing arguments for them to keep spitting money at unprofitable projects. Iger recently announced reduced creative output when it comes to the MCU. Looking at Star Wars’ release slate for the next couple of years, you can notice that fewer Star Wars projects will be released as well.

However, the more people sign the petition, the chances that it gets renewed only get bigger. The chances are small but never zero.

On the other hand, a movement to de-canonize ‘The Acolyte’ was also started on Change.org, at the moment it has far fewer signatures currently standing at 518. This tells us that the majority of fans did not hate ‘The Acolyte’ with passion, it tells us that they simply did not care about it.

Ultimately Disney is unlikely to de-canonize ‘The Acolyte’ quite frankly there’s nothing to de-canonize, the show did nothing to connect to the prequel trilogy, and all the instances that clashed with ‘Phantom Menace’ were explained by the simple fact that no Jedi lived to tell the tale of Sith Lord Qimir.

It would also be a shame to de-canonize the show since Qimir ended up being a good addition to the franchise, and hopefully, if the studio ever ventures into the High Republic territory again, we get to see more of him – and by extension Darth Plagueis.

What do you think? Let us know in the comments below!

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