We had this in the headlines yesterday but seeing as I've written about this show at length twice already, I wanted to complete the trilogy with this post.

Just to rewind a bit, the Disney+ show The Acolyte was released in June and was immediately met with a lot of criticism from fans who were not impressed with the first few episodes. I won't go into the details but if you're interested I gave a summary of the first four episodes here.

The show had two basic problems, one practical and one conceptual. First, the writing was pretty bad. The show is designed as a mystery of sorts which jumps around from past to present and back again without really creating much intrigue. In fact, what you discover by the end of the show is that the writers lied to their audience in the early episodes to hide part of the story so it could be revealed later as a shocking twist. But it wasn't a brilliant twist so much as a cheat. On top of that the motivations of the major characters is never really clear and seems to shift randomly from episode to episode. That's the first problem: Bad writing. 

The second problem is conceptual. As I argued in my 2nd take on this show, it's obvious that the whole concept here was a post-2020, BLM-inspired take on Star Wars. If the Jedi are space cops then the Jedi must in fact be bad guys who indiscriminately murder entire communities of black and gay people and then cover it up. Why? Because all cops are bastards, you fascist! Someone might have suggested to the show's creator that a show in which the Jedi are suddenly the bad guys maybe was a twist too far for the Star Wars universe, but I guess Disney though BLM-Star Wars would be edgy and therefore good. So they dumped a reported $180 million on this turd.

There's also an interaction between the two problems. Someone could have made a very dark show about Jedi's who abuse their authority but it wasn't these writers. While it's clear that was their intent, what you actually get is a show that doesn't make sense. For instance, one of the Jedi is so ashamed of his secret past that he agrees to kill himself. Later we learn that aside from acting like an impulsive idiot (bad writing), he actually didn't do anything to anyone. Another character (a Wookie Jedi) gets murdered for his role in this massacre, but what was his role exactly? His mind was taken over by the space witches to attack his Jedi friends. Other than that, he never harms anyone I don't think. They started with a terrible premise about bad cops and made a complete hash of it, so much so that there is literally no one to root for in this show.

The show got canceled because the ratings were poor, the lowest of any Star Wars show released by Disney so far. And this week lead actress Amandla Stenberg, who previously put out a diss track calling her critics racist, once again released a video in which she said the show was canceled because of "hyper-conservative bigotry." Here's a bit of what she said.

Our show, our Star Wars show has been canceled. I'm going to be transparent and say It’s not a huge shock for me. Of course, I live in the bubble of my own reality but for those who aren’t aware there has been a rampage of vitriol that we have faced since the show was even announced, when it was still just a concept and no one had even seen it. That’s when we started experiencing a rampage of I would say hyper-conservative bigotry and vitriol, prejudice, hatred, and hateful language towards us. You know, this really affected me when I first got the job because it’s just not something, even though I anticipated it happening, it’s not something you can fully understand what it feels like until it’s happening to you.

Later on she added: "It's not lost on me how the way that these events have unfolded is also due to the hyper-divisiveness of the time that we live in, that is driven I would say at this point by echo-chambers of thought and algorithms that reinforce our biases. And I think that applies to everybody." Had she stopped there it might have been a somewhat neutral take on things, but of course she immediately went back to blaming the right. "But I think that in a particular sect of people it manifests as a lot of fear for what is changing, a lot of hatred for anything that is other," she said. She closed the clip by saying, "Let's vote, y'all." No need to specify who she wants you to vote for. That's a given.

I won't add much to this except to repeat that while I'm sure there are some obnoxious racists out there sending hate mail to Amandla Stenberg, that's not why her show was canceled. The show was canceled because it was a woke concept at odds with the universe it was in and because of the terrible execution of the concept. It succeeded neither as light entertainment nor incisive social commentary. Those who tuned it out did so not because everyone watching was an alt-right racist, but because it was bad art which seemed morally confused.

It would have been nice if after some reflection, Stenberg could have been a bit more thoughtful about why the show failed, but while the tone has changed since her diss track her thinking really hasn't. I guess it's always easier to blame your enemies than it is to admit your friends dropped the ball. Here's the full clip. If you're interested in a longer reaction from one of the people being blamed for the show's cancelation, that's here.

Amandla Stenberg's response to the Acolyte being canceled.
Do you agree with her?

She says (paraphrasing) that the show suffered from tons of vitriol, bigotry, racism and hate from the alt-right which, essentially, is why it got canceled.

Idk about all that I just though it's… pic.twitter.com/lviuI98yD3

— StarWarsTheory (@realswtheory) August 29, 2024