Angry Right-Wing Male Star Wars Fans Didn’t Get The Acolyte Canceled. The General Audience Did.

There’s been a great disturbance in the Force, as if dozens of salty voices suddenly cried out over The Acolyte and were suddenly silenced.

And no, I’m not talking about the “toxic right-wing male YouTubers” or whoever The Acolyte fans want to blame for its cancellation. Rather, I’m talking about The Acolyte fans themselves, who are so furious over the Disney Plus series cancellation that they’ve taken to publicly shaming Lucasfilm as “cowards” in multiple articles and are even attempting to coordinate demonetization campaigns on Twitter/X against YouTubers who they are blaming for the show’s cancellation.

While it’s natural for fans to be upset about a series cancelation, the assessment that it was a handful of YouTubers who got Disney’s incredibly expensive streaming show canceled by complaining about it is incorrect on so many levels.

The general audience got The Acolyte canceled because they simply didn’t watch it. The “normies” as we like to call them. And the same normies who didn’t care enough to watch The Acolyte are, for the most part, unaware that these “angry right-wing” YouTubers even exist. In fact, most “normies” are blissfully unaware of most YouTube personalities until they hit “critical mass” in mainstream media like a PewdiePie or a MrBeast (and even then, it’s usually for the wrong reasons.)

These Disney Star Wars fans are actually blaming Lucasfilm for catering to the “angry right-wing” fans.

Do you mean the very same Bay Area-based Lucasfilm that loudly fired actress Gina Carano off of The Mandalorian for her conservative tweets?

The same Lucasfilm that employs Pablo Hidalgo, who has made his disdain for online Star Wars fans very well-known?

No, sorry. It’s much, actually, much harder to believe that Lucasfilm would be siding with online personalities after years of them criticizing their product. And while we’ll likely never know for sure, it’s more likely that people within the walls of Lucasfilm fought as hard as they could to save The Acolyte because they didn’t want “the chuds” to score a win against them.

Why was The Acolyte canceled?

“It’s nothing personal, it’s just business.”

The Acolyte was the lowest-viewed Disney Star Wars streaming series and also the costliest. According to Forbes, It cost a whopping $671,000 per minute to produce.

The Acolyte is the second most expensive show on the list ($180 million) after Andor ($250 million) but that’s only the total spent. If you look at cost-per-minute of footage, The Acolyte cost a whopping $671,641 per minute to produce. Andor cost just $529,661—about $150,000 less per minute—thanks to its longer, meatier episodes and 12-episode count.

There’s this thing in business called ROI — Return on Investment. Google it.

The critical scores didn’t help, either. While we can debate whether or not the series’ Audience Score was “review bombed” by angry Star Wars fans, the critical reception was… tepid. At 78%, it’s not in the same league as The Mandalorian (90%) and, once again, it cost a lot more to produce. Also, there’s no breakout Baby Grogu character to merchandise the hell out of to help recoup the cost of production.

The Original Trilogy had R2-D2 and Ewoks. Even the Disney Sequel Trilogy had Porgs. The Acolyte doesn’t even have much going for it in the way of being “toyetic,” but they’re still trying.

Alien: Romulus’ Box Office Performance Blows This Theory Out of the Water

The same YouTubers who criticized The Acolyte also heavily criticized another Disney release, Alien: Romulus. Despite this, Alien: Romulus had the second-best opening ever for the franchise, destroying the entire box office run of Alien: Covenant in just two weeks.

If these YouTubers had that much sway over general audiences, then people would’ve stayed far away from this movie as well, correct?

This isn’t the first time Disney Star Wars fans who are obsessed with the franchise’s critics have made bold claims that were easily disproven. A few years ago, a pro Disney Star Wars podcast called Rewriting Ripley tried to defame these YouTubers by linking them to “the alt-right.” Another YouTuber thoroughly debunked their claims in this lengthy video.

All this drama over a franchise “about space wizards for children” as some like to say.

Disney Can No Longer Afford for Star Wars to Fail

Star Wars and Lucasfilm have probably been mismanaged more than any other Disney acquisition. The sequel trilogy saw a decline film after film, Solo was a box office flop, and the Disney Plus series is also on the decline. Ollie’s Bargain Outlet has pallets full of unsold Disney Star Wars merchandise, something that was unthinkable even a decade ago.

Outside of Star Wars, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny was a massive box office failure, and Willow had viewership so low that Disney purged it off of their streaming platform entirely to take the write down.

The rumored Rey movie has been postponed in favor of The Mandalorian and Grogu, likely because Disney sees it as the best chance to correct the franchise’s course.

It’s not just YouTubers who are calling it out. Even mainstream media outlets acknowledge that Star Wars, under Disney, is a damaged brand.

Trust us, Lucasfilm is paying more attention to them than to YouTube. If a normie is going to be swayed, it’ll be from a Fortune or a Forbes or an MSN or a CNN, and not a random YouTube personality.

So, no, regardless of what you may think of them, critical YouTubers did not get The Acolyte canceled. Your next-door neighbor did by not watching it.