The Acolyte (2024)

All Star Wars shows and movies are listed in their story order.

The Acolyte streaming series on Disney+ is a prequel to Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace, with events taking place about a hundred years before the movie.

At a cost of around $250 million to make 8 episodes, some YouTubers referred to the show as a money laundering scheme.  The quality feels second rate and some fans hated the show from the outset.

It did not help that writer-director Leslye Headland gave interviews prior to the release indicating that the show would have a more negative take on the Jedi.  This biased many people against the show before it aired. This could have been consistent with the prequel trilogy, which implied that the Jedi Order fell due to their overconfidence and hubris, but the series portrays the Jedi as corrupt, which is not good.

I think that the first six episodes are entertaining.  They are not great, but they led me to believe that the series was building up to something good.  I was interested in the story of Osha and her Force connection to her evil twin sister Mae.

Unfortunately, the show fails to stick the landing.  Episode 7 is not good, and the final episode has a few logical problems.

I like the show much more than most fans, but it still falls short of what it should have been.

The streaming ratings for The Acolyte were abysmal, so Disney cancelled the show.  Since the first season feels mostly like a setup for a possibly better second season, I was hoping that a second season would have redeemed the series.

Rating: B-.