New Data Reveals That ‘The Acolyte’ Is Second Most Successful Star Wars Show of All Time – Outperforming Pretty Much Everything Else

Even before its release ‘Star Wars: The Acolyte’ was a highly controversial show. This was partly due to its premise and lack of quality, and partly due to all the backlash surrounding its diverse cast, and focus on the female protagonist – and the showrunner.

Following the release, the show was both review-boosted and review-bombed, the lack of quality was highly criticized as well as some instances of possibly canon-breaking events. ‘The Acolyte’ might not be the best Star Wars live-action show, but it’s definitely the most talked about and most overanalyzed in the history of the franchise.

For a couple of weeks now we’ve tracked data related to viewers, and after the initial strong numbers that indicated ‘The Acolyte’ just slightly underperformed compared to last year’s ‘Ahsoka,’ the show has been losing “minutes watched” numbers for two weeks in a row, first dropping by 31% and then dropping by 11%. These data are provided by Luminate.

Naturally, some of these losses can be attributed to shorter episodes, but the last few episodes were pretty much the same duration so the loss was definitely due to people slightly losing interest in the show.

But, here’s one interesting twist, according to Reelgood’s data, ‘The Acolyte’ is the second most successful Star Wars show! Reelgood provided the data to Screenrant and the data shows something interesting. Reelgood, which monitors 20 million monthly viewing decisions across US streaming platforms, examined how ‘The Acolyte’ compares to other live-action Disney+ Star Wars shows. Surprisingly, the data suggests that The Acolyte may be more popular than many believe.

‘The Acolyte’ outperformed the average top 100 TV show by a factor of 6, making it highly successful. It is only surpassed by ‘Obi-Wan Kenobi,’ which outperformed the average top 100 TV show by a factor of 8. So, how come ‘The Acolyte’ scored so high while Luminate data shows a drastic fall in minutes watched?

Objectively, we don’t know what factors Reelgood uses to determine the “engagement” index, and there’s also the fact that Reelgood provided the data only for the first 14 days since the show’s release. If you can recall during the first two weeks the show did have strong numbers, which even Luminate detected.

Things went south following the release of episode 3, an episode that featured an all-female coven of witches which somehow managed to create the twins Osha and Mae with the Force. It’s after episode 3 that the show has seen a drop in viewership.

We likely won’t know how successful the show was until it’s full release. We still have 3 more episodes to go, and we have no doubt that it’s going to be one of the most talked about in the coming weeks as well.

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