The Best Star Wars Show Wouldn’t Get A Season 2 Today
Recently, Disney’s decision to cancel The Acolyte has led to intense fan debate: some claim that it’s only reasonable to cancel a controversial show with low viewership, and others maintain that the series had some very interesting ideas and deserved a second season to really find its legs. As for me, I’m in the middle—I had problems with The Acolyte but thought that the show ultimately stuck the landing far better than haters would say. But for both camps, some interesting food for thought is that, in today’s streaming landscape, The Clone Wars (generally considered the best Star Wars TV show) would never have gotten a second season.
The Clone Wars Had A Rocky Start
If you doubt that Clone Wars would get canceled after season 1 these days, all you have to do is go back and look at the different seasons’ scores on Rotten Tomatoes.
There, season 1 has a critical score of 69 percent, with some of the critics complaining about “eternal [lightsaber] battles” being boring and how poorly the show comes across “If you judge this series by the standards of the original trilogy.”
One critic in particular singled out season 1 for how “the plot is Byzantine and the characters lack all depth,” resulting in “either irritation or boredom.”
Season 1 Is Terrible Compared To Future Seasons
Now, at this point, I bet you’re yelling at me that a 69 percent Rotten Tomatoes score is still “fresh” and that such a score wouldn’t sink The Clone Wars.
However, the season is notably bad when weighed against the other seasons. While seasons 2 and 4 don’t have Rotten Tomatoes critical scores, the rest do, and each of these seasons has a whopping 100 percent critical score.
Strong Female Representation
Additionally, The Clone Wars came out in 2008, and it’s fair to say that if it was released in the modern day, our endless culture wars would have ensured it was reviewed bombed and got horrible word-of-mouth from the worst influencers in the galaxy. After all, season 1 frequently centered stories around strong female characters like Ahsoka, Padme, and even the Asajj Ventress.
In a world where YouTubers unironically and endlessly complained about The Acolyte not having enough white male characters, does anyone really think these people wouldn’t have moved heaven and Earth to get this show canceled if it came out today?
Lucas Kept Clone Wars Going
Obviously, The Clone Wars wasn’t canceled—it was a passion project of George Lucas himself, and he poured much of his own wealth into the show even as he protected creatives like Dave Filoni from changing anything in order to help sell toys.
Because he believed in it, The Clone Wars survived having an awful feature film debut and rocky season 1 and soon became the best Star Wars show ever made. These days, though, nobody at Disney would creatively protect a major passion project, and God knows they wouldn’t waste an opportunity to sell more toys.
Star Wars Needs Lucas
With all this being said, I’m not claiming that The Acolyte is anywhere near as good as The Clone Wars, but simply that it was canceled before it could get better. But Disney doesn’t have enough faith in its projects to invest in their future, just as much of the fandom doesn’t have enough patience to wait for decent shows to become excellent shows.
George Lucas may be the only hope for this beleaguered franchise, and unless he comes back, we can look forward to one canceled project after another as Disney throws everything against the wall to see what sticks.
