Recently, Deadline reported that their sources said that the latest Disney+ Star Wars Show, “The Acolyte,” would not be getting a second season. Contrary to many “news” articles blaming men, this is likely because the show was not watched as much as it needed to by general audiences.
If a search is done for “The Acolyte,” article after article appears, usually by some “journalist” using their employer’s site as a pulpit to scream about the “toxic, misogynistic, racist, incel, men, ‘fans’ who somehow are the “vocal minority” yet were solely responsible for the show being canceled.
But the data has seemingly pointed to a lack of audience for the show. The general audiences, who aren’t even participating in the discourse online, did not watch the show.
I would even argue that those who did not like the show were still among those watching it and counted to the numbers. Which means that it’s because people did not watch.
Disney has had a Star Wars problem for awhile now.
Like Marvel, Star Wars has been in decline over the past few years.
There have been a lot of shows and with each new “Star Wars” offering the audience continues to shrink. This indicates that people are over a galaxy far, far away.
The data.
Luminate put up this chart after the show completed episode 6 and had two more episodes to go. As you can see “The Acolyte” trailed far behind the lowest performing shows.
Even if the numbers doubled in the next six weeks, it would not put the show ahead of “Ahsoka.”
Nielson numbers only had “The Acolyte” in its top 10 for about half of the episodes.
Star Wars Net posted the numbers, which were not great.
The first two episodes only hit 488 million minutes, which was one of the worst viewerships for a “Star Wars” Disney+ Show. “Andor” had 624 million minutes, and “Ahsoka” had 829 million minutes at launch.
Both of these shows were considered the lowest viewed before “The Acolyte.”
Each week “The Acolyte” dropped, except for the 7th episode:
“In the first week, it tallied 488M minutes watched for two episodes (an all-time low for Star Wars) and it only went downhill from there. The third episode amassed 370M minutes watched, but after that week, the show disappeared. That means its viewed minutes were under 298M (week 3), 319M (week 4), 332M (week 5), and 375M (week 6) minutes. On week 7, it reached the #10 spot with 335M minutes watched.” – Star Wars Net
But, Men shouldn’t be the target demographic.
I keep seeing “journalists” blaming the “chuds” for the cancelation of the show. Usually claiming that they are “toxic” and “Star Wars” isn’t theirs.
However, the data says otherwise.
The biggest audience for “Star Wars” is men. Not just men, older men.
The Wrap put up an article with this chart from Parrot Analytics showing the demographics for Marvel and Star Wars.
Except for a couple Marvel shows, the audience skews male for both franchises.
70% of the audience for the “Star Wars” franchise identify as dudes. No matter how Disney has tried to change this, it still remains mostly male.
For all the screaming about “toxic fans,” I could argue that their videos and posts actually boosted the engagement numbers. Disney would have rolled all that into a final number, but it still wasn’t renewed.
If the “hate-watching” views weren’t counted, the viewership would have been even lower. The final watch time/viewership numbes factor those views in at the same level as “fan” watch time.
The issue is that people, in general, are not watching “Star Wars.”
Disney has already pushed the franchise too far, and fans are over it. Calling people names for not watching or liking the show is just driving people further away. These “journalists” are making division worse, not better.
At the end of the day, you can like or dislike something, but you do not have the right to make assumptions about others or use negative, dehumanizing descriptors like “racist,” “troll,” “toxic,” “misogynist,” etc. to belittle those who disagreed with you. Journalists should be even more cautious of posting opinions as facts.
The end.
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