‘The Acolyte’ Basically Killed ‘Skeleton Crew’ By Destroying Faith In The ‘Star Wars’ Brand

The story of Star Wars can be summed up by one word: Tragedy. What ought to have been a story about hope is one of disappointment and even betrayal. If you are a Star Wars fan in the year 2025, you know what heartbreak feels like. You understand loss.

I won’t pin all my gripes on Disney, either. The tragedy of Star Wars began long before the House of Mouse gobbled up Lucasfilm. First, there were the many fallow years, the time between the release of Return Of The Jedi and The Phantom Menace. During this time, Star Wars fans got a handful of video games and a plethora of novels and comics, but no new movies with Luke Skywalker or Han Solo or Princess Leia and the droids.

Then came the prequels themselves. While they’ve experienced something of a comeback in terms of public perception—you often hear people say they’re far better than Disney-era Star Wars, and kids who grew up with them tend to love them—I still find them one of the most disappointing cinematic ventures of all time. Sure, Revenge Of The Sith had some good moments, but overall the prequels were a disaster.

Perhaps worst of all, worse than anything Disney has done, are the George Lucas edits to the original trilogy. These, I’d argue, are true crimes against cinema. I refuse to watch them in this format. I tried watching Return Of The Jedi a couple years ago and the bizarre music scene added to the Jabba sequence was enough to make me turn it off. There are other ways to watch HD versions of the original trilogy since we will apparently never get restored versions, and that is the path I’ve chosen.

I won’t list all the failures of the Disney Star Wars era, but they are manifold. The fact that an overarching story for the sequel trilogy wasn’t planned out from the beginning, leading to the jumbled mess we got in the end, still beggars belief. The Disney+ offerings have been uneven at best, with bright spots in the first two seasons of The Mandalorian and a true masterpiece in Andor, but not much else to show for it. The Book Of Boba Fett and Obi-Wan were both utter disasters. Ahsoka had its moments, but fell far short of Star Wars: Rebels.

And then there was the nail in the proverbial coffin: The Acolyte, a show so far removed from what the vast majority of Star Wars fans actually want from this IP that it was cancelled after just one season. Despite being the second most-watched show on Disney+ in 2024, it fell far short of just about every other Star Wars streaming series, while costing more than almost all of them. The fact is, all the culture war noise aside, The Acolyte was a genuinely bad TV show. All the flashy lightsaber duels couldn’t make up for its rushed character development, wooden dialogue and clunky script. The few things the show got right were wildly outweighed by its myriad missteps.

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This was, in some ways, the final straw for many Star Wars fans. But even setting aside the hardcore fans who actually gave up on the IP after The Acolyte, I believe it had a demoralizing effect on the wider Star Wars community. After so many disappointments in recent years, why bother anymore? Apathy has overtaken the Star Wars brand, and that’s a very real problem that Disney and Lucasfilm need to address.

The effect of this apathy can be seen in the dismal viewership numbers for Star Wars: Skeleton Crew, a show that might never have reached the same numbers as Obi-Wan or The Mandalorian for a number of reasons, including the fact that it’s geared more toward kids and that it doesn’t feature any well-known characters like Obi-Wan Kenobi or Ahsoka. Then again, neither did The Mandalorian at first. The real problem for Skeleton Crew is that apathy has replaced hype. Had this show come out after The Mandalorian, when hype was through the roof still, I suspect it would have done very well. But following in the footsteps of The Acolyte was a death sentence for the Jude Law-led series.

This is a real shame, because I genuinely enjoyed Skeleton Crew. It wasn’t perfect. It didn’t quite pull off the whole “Goonies in space” thing. But it was a fun action-adventure with some great characters, plenty of fun episodes filled with pirates and vagabonds and an interesting mystery, and it felt like Star Wars.

This is the chief problem facing Star Wars now, and Disney should probably do some real soul-searching before moving ahead with any new projects. The Star Wars fandom is in disarray. It’s unclear how the damage to this IP can ever be repaired. A good place to start would be coming up with a better understanding of who the core Star Wars fanbase is and what kind of content they actually want. As I’ve noted many times in the past, the answer to that question is pretty straightforward: The vast bulk of Star Wars fandom is made up of men (and women who enjoy entertainment that appeals to men) and want to see heroic space fantasy that puts an emphasis on great characters and fun adventures with clearly defined heroes and villains.

This isn’t to say that these stories can’t include morally complex characters—Anakin Skywalker is a great example of a character with a dynamic arc whose personal journey was anything but simple—but audiences are largely tired of subversion at this point. Star Wars is escapist fantasy. Fans want more heroic figures like Luke Skywalker, not convoluted stories about how the Jedi are actually bad and maybe, just maybe, this murderous Sith is just misunderstood.

Nor is this to say that Star Wars can’t ever release shows geared toward other audiences. It’s a big tent. There is room for shows that target kids, that are more female-driven, that represent LGBTQ people, etc. You just have to balance that out with the bread-and-butter stuff, and when you’re bungling popular characters like Obi-Wan and Boba Fett, there’s just not that much wiggle room. At this point, Disney and Lucasfilm should hire the best writers they can find and commission a show that embraces everything that made the original trilogy great: A heroic journey, a band of relatable heroes, a menacing antagonist, lightsaber duels and dogfighting, humor and an upbeat message about the power of friendship and loyalty and courage against great odds. Tell a great story that your audience actually wants and you’ll find success.

If, of course, you can overcome the dread wall of apathy and mistrust that has overtaken the Star Wars fandom. I’m hopeful that, with the right direction, this will be possible. Rebellions are built on hope, after all.

Oh and I’m very much looking forward to the second season of Andor. That’s the only Disney-era production that mirrors the original trilogy’s quality in my opinion.