Star Wars: The Acolyte — Dubbed ‘The Woke-alyte’ — Reportedly Canceled after First Season

Production company Lucasfilm reportedly will not continue with a second season of the Star Wars offshoot The Acolyte, the first season of which had a whopping budget of about $180 million and streamed on Disney+.  

The Acolyte creator Leslye Headland and lead actress Amandla Stenberg shared a particular understanding of Star Wars, describing it as “gay” in an interview Wrap. Headland joked that “it’s canon that R2-D2 is a lesbian” and asked rhetorically, “Are you telling me with a straight face that C-3PO is straight?”

The Acolyte’s last episode was released just over a month ago, and the Rotten Tomatoes critic score is a favorable 78 percent. The series has been commended for “centering on a coven of lesbian space witches,” “giving space to queer people in the Star Wars universe,” and casting mostly minorities and women. (The LGBTQ+ themes were to be expected, since Headland previously told The Advocate that “there’s just no way that me being a queer woman is not going to be reflected in my work.”)

But the broader public watched with less enthusiasm: The series got only an 18 percent average audience score. Conservatives specifically found the show’s unsubtle progressive messaging rather insufferable. “Show-runner Leslye Headland contrived The Acolyte using Star Wars ideas, figures, and lingo to replicate progressive pillars for environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance, the corporate bottom line said to prioritize ‘profit, people, planet’ — this time in the interplanetary sense,” critic Armond White wrote in National Review.

Conservative commentators ridiculed the series — especially one scene where Stenberg’s character corrects herself for possibly using the wrong pronouns. Stenberg seemed unbothered by the widespread criticism that The Acolyte was too progressive, telling GQ Magazine that “there is a specific kind of Star Wars fan that’s very vocal on the internet” and “they’ve called our show The Woke-alyte a fair amount — which I’m like, ‘OK, what about it?’” 

Stenberg also came under fire for her unscripted lines, particularly comments she made in a 2018 interview with Trevor Noah. When discussing her movie The Hate U Give, which centers on the police shooting and killing a black male, Stenberg said that the “goal” of the movie was “white people crying.”

“Hopefully, people will have a sense of empathy. . . . So far, it’s been really successful. We have a lot of white people crying after, which is great,” said Stenberg. “I’ve never seen so many white people crying before. It’s amazing.”

When those comments resurfaced and sparked outrage, Stenberg wrote the song “Discourse” and released a music video. Stenberg sang: “And now you listening imma tell you something fascinating / they spinning WOKE bastardize it and appropriate it / last I recall WOKE was something we created / speak truth to power / keep an eye out for you silly racists.”

I never disliked Star Wars, but I also wasn’t a big enough fan to become obsessed with the franchise and memorize the nuances of the universe — much to my younger brother’s dismay. I can’t offer comment on whether The Acolyte neglected details of the previous Star Wars productions because I admittedly don’t know how “the Force” works. (There’s something about a “Thread,” right?) But The Acolyte — a blunder costing nearly $200 million — contributes to the ever-growing evidence that audiences have lost the patience required to sit through progressive lecturing that masquerades as storytelling. People want to be entertained, not insulted.