The Acolyte Gets Canceled And The Star Wars Trolls Are Celebrating

And why wouldn’t they be? All their whining about diversity and inclusion has all but guaranteed that future Star Wars projects will be full of straight white men. Oh they’ll be a token POC and a woman here or there. After all, the Star Wars trolls like to pretend that their complaints with the Acolyte weren’t about race or gender but simply “bad writing.”

But the chances of us getting another show helmed by an openly gay woman and starring an openly gay black woman are slim to none. No, we all know what happens when Disney listens to the vocal minority. That’s how we got The Rise of Skywalker.

Meanwhile, these trolls who call themselves Star Wars “fans” are doing more to ruin their sacred franchise than Disney ever could. TikTok, X—all the social media platforms are full of Star Wars discourse so gross that the franchise will never escape its reputation for having the most toxic fandom. I see people all the time online calling out Star Wars fans for being the worst.

There’s a reason that the phrase “Nobody hates Star Wars as much as Star Wars fans” is a thing. If anything, I’m underplaying how bad the Star Wars trolls have gotten.

They try to act like they have legitimate criticisms, like “The Acolyte breaks canon!” But the second you try to explain to them that it doesn’t, the conversation pivots to stuff like pronouns and Leslye Headland saying R2-D2 being a lesbian is canon. Anyone listening in good faith knows that Headland was joking.

The droids are obviously the gay couple from The Birdcage. Artoo is like Robin Williams‘ sassy bear, while Threepio and Nathan Lane’s aging queen are practically the same. All joking aside, The Simpsons made the “R2-D2 and C-3PO are gay” joke decades ago, and I don’t remember any Star Wars trolls going after them. That’s because, like typical trolls, The Fandom Menace picks and chooses what to get angry over when it serves their agenda.

Star Wars trolls are, of course, sighting low viewing numbers as the reason Disney canceled The Acolyte. Go woke, go broke, right? Yeah, I don’t buy that.

For one thing, even people who hated The Acolyte were watching every new episode like a hawk so they could find as many things to nitpick as possible. If it were possible to separate viewing numbers between legitimate fans and those hate-watching the show, I have no doubt The Acolyte would be breaking records left and right.

And even if it wasn’t super profitable, Disney shouldn’t have canceled it. The Acolyte had the most buzz of any Disney+ series so far. Was a lot of that buzz negative? Sure was! Just like Velma, but Max gave that trainwreck a second season.

Lucasfilm is sending the wrong message by giving in to the Star Wars trolls. The studio is essentially telling The Fandom Menace, “If you don’t like what we give you, just bully us mercilessly, and we will totally give in!” Disney is setting the precedent that if “fans” don’t like the skin tone, sexual orientation, or genitals of its stars and creators, they only need to whine about it, and Disney will try something else.

So Star Wars haters and trolls, go ahead and pat yourselves on the back. Fire up the latest YouTube video from Star Wars Theory or whatever grifter you’ve hitched your wagon to, and revel in the thing you hate crashing and burning. Just remember that when all of Star Wars is like The Rise of Skywalker—nothing but pandering callbacks and safe choices—you’ll have no one but yourselves to blame.

When the next five Disney+ shows are set on Tatooine and feature characters we’ve seen a million times, I don’t want to hear you crying about it. A lot of Star Wars trolls fancy themselves the Rebellion but they don’t realize they grew up to be Stormtroopers. My favorite fandom has fallen to the dark side and I don’t know how to save it.