Mini Series "The Acolyte" Season 1 Discussion (Spoilers Allowed)

You really don't have to retcon anything more then the first season of Kenobi already did.

 

If the critical response to a show is strong, that can justify another season. It's not always about the audience response. Creators and executives understand that audiences don't always respond to art, that they're looking for something familiar to consume and may not appreciate a work that critics and artists do.

Throughout TV history, while we often see good shows canceled due to audience response (Twin Peaks), we also see others continue.

 

On IMDb The Book of Bobba Fett has a 7.2/10 based on 191K reviews, where as The Acolyte has a 4/10 based on 112K reviews.

The Book of Boba Fett
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13668894/

The Acolyte
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt12262202/

On Rotten Tomatoes The Book of Bobba Fett has a 49% audience score based on 5,000 + ratings. The Acolyte has a 17% average audience score.

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/the_book_of_boba_fett/s01
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/star_wars_the_acolyte

 

It's review bombed, so nobody is taking that seriously.

 

LOL. That doesn't prove anything. These sites are easy to manipulate, as we saw with Acolyte.

 

Lol. I did not expect you meant audience ratings on IMDB and RT, which are absolutely useless. I thought maybe you were talking about viewership numbers.

 

I don’t think The Acolyte is going to get a 2nd season.

To a degree it failed because of mediocrity. Rainging from decant to bad.

It could have been Disneys “KoToR”, well made product that increased fans of a preexisting era. A story which really showed to non-reading (in context of Star Wars literature) fans that Disney can do pre-TPM well.

I don’t see that with the Acolyte. Sure some do want a season 2, but that is not the overwhelming view within the fan base, at least from what I can tell from the posters here and the general Star Wars Reddit.


Even with the popularity of Boba Fett, because the show was….”Meh”, TBoBF never got renewed.

 

Reddit likes to meh no real hate. And Twitter loves it. You can not watch it if you hate it.

 

If you want to compare Season 1 of Ahsoka since it was the previous live action show before The Acolyte, here are some interesting numbers.

https://cosmicbook.news/the-acolyte-nielsen-ratings

Ahsoka cost $100 million to make, where as The Acolyte cost $187 million.

According to the Nielsen ratings The Acolyte lost 75% of viewership.

What about the other Star Wars shows?

Ahsoka? Via Nielsen, the two-episode premiere back on August 22, 2023 was watched for 829 minutes (millions), so that averages to 414.5 per episode.

The Mandalorian Season 3 premiered with one episode on March 1, 2023 for 823.

Andor premiered with three episodes on September 21, 2022 and was watched for 624, an average of 208 per episode.

Obi-Wan Kenobi premiered with two episodes on May 27, 2022 for 1,026, an average of 513 an episode.

The Book of Boba Fett premiered with one episode on December 29, 2021 for 389.

The Mandalorian Season 2 premiered with one episode on October 30, 2020 for 1031.

Nielsen viewership premiere average per episode in minutes (millions):

• The Mandalorian S2 – 1032
• The Mandalorian S3 – 823
• Obi-Wan Kenobi: 513
• Ahsoka 2 – 414.5
• Book of Boba Fett – 389
• The Acolyte – 244
• Andor – 208

 

Acolyte was far better than Ahsoka.

 

Almost no real emotions in Ahsoka show

 

Agreed.

Ahsoka feel flat for me. I have no idea what that show was about. It just felt like a lot of fan service.

I thought The Acolyte had a proper story and characters that I could get emotionally invested in.

 

If you thought The Acolyte was better than Ahsoka, that's your own personal opinion, and I respect that.

However, in terms of numbers both Disney and Lucasfilm announced that the first episode of Ahsoka had 14 million views in the five days following its release, making it the most watched title on Disney+ during the week of its launch.

The Acolyte had 4.8 million views in its first day of release and 11.1 million views across its first five days.

Never mind that other report where it says The Acolyte lost 75% of viewership.

 

Lol what!

 

The numbers for Ahsoka were better than what The Acolyte was getting.

 

That The Acolyte lost 75% of its viewership thats what i question

 

This is from that link I previously posted.

https://cosmicbook.news/the-acolyte-nielsen-ratings

The Acolyte Nielsen ratings are in, and as expected, they’re not good, with the numbers being the second worst for Disney Star Wars.

We already knew the viewership was lower than Ahsoka, but it’s also been learned the viewership is much lower than The Mandalorian by what looks to be nearly 75%, it’s lower than Obi-Wan Kenobi, and it’s even lower than The Book of Boba Fett.

The Acolyte only beats Andor in terms of viewership, and really not by much.

The Acolyte also cost nearly double that of Ahsoka—$187M vs $100M—while the Nielsen ratings reveal that Ahsoka‘s viewership is nearly double that of The Acolyte.

Disney and Bob Iger definitely can’t be happy with these numbers.

 

Ok 75% from The Mandalorian and Kenobi is not bad. Those shows has huge numbers and beloved by entire fan base.

 

I wouldn’t say “Kenobi” is beloved by the entire fanbase. The character yes, not the show.

Various complaints….Leia chase, etc….

The show could have been a lot better then what we got.

 

"Lost 75% of its audience" suggests that 4 times as many people watched the premier versus the finale. "75% less audience than the most popular Star Wars show" is saying something very different. I also think people should keep in mind that D+ is a subscription model, not an ads model. I would suspect that unique viewers are more valuable than raw totals. I would suspect that a higher percentage of people watching a show like Ahsoka were already watching The Mandalorian compared to the percentage of viewers of Andor that were already watching The Mandalorian. I wonder where The Acolyte falls on that spectrum, and how that plays into its future.

 

Is it possible that a percentage of people who watched Ahsoka because they had already seen her character in The Clone Wars and Star Wars Rebels? After she made her live action debut in Season 2 of The Mandalorian, it would be natural for them to watch Season 1 of Ahsoka?

 

I think the poster probably means TBOBF got more viewings/more minute watched. The Acolyte received pretty positive critical reception (ratings?), better than TBOBF at least (not that media reviews etc. are worth the paper they are written on IMO).

 

Just as there are Box Office threads, I feel there should be Viewership Numbers threads. Because My God can they be a thread killer.

 

Sure it could but thats not a way to wish it be cancelled. Hope it improves. I think covid and writers strike no matter how small or big affected this like other shows. And sounds like LFL changes what was Lesley Headland original idea for the show so we got a mix of ideas.

 

Why do articles that try to twist numbers in the worst kind of ways still get posted?
Didn't bother to check what sort of site cosmicbook is, but they sure love to present numbers in a very click-baity way, while refusing to present the numbers correctly.
Especially with the acting all surprised that a show with no connection to any other story that is going on would come in lower than THE Star Wars tv-show, or shows that ran with estalished characters. Of course such a show is unlike to match a show about Kenobi, or Boba Fett. And even Ahsoka is way more of a build-in fanbase.

Streaming numbers are hard to gauge, because we do not get data in the same way we get for tv-shows on cabel tv.
Most importantly, you can't just take the listed viewing-number and compare them directly to other shows, not even if you try to break it down into episodes. Apart from the numbers being anything but certain, it is also essential to take running time into consideration. E.g. Ahsoka's first episode ran for 55 minutes, episode 2 for 42, the first two episodes of The Acolyte run 40 and 36 minutes. It should be blindingly obvious to anyone who is capable of counting that a longer show will have a much higher total in those charts. If 10 million people watch an episode that lasts 30 minutes, and the same number of people watch an episode that lasts 50 minutes, then you will get 300 million and 500 million minutes watched respectively, even though the exact same number of people watched. That doesn't even take the credits into consideration, which will often be skipped. If those are roughly the same length, then that will hurt a shorter show much more than a longer one, e.g. 30 is half of 60, but 25 is less than half of 55. Using those numbers without adjusting them for episode-length is an egregious mishandling of data.

The numbers for The Acolyte aren't huge, but they aren't nearly as bad as certain doom-posting "news"-sites like to pretend. These sites are either incapable of being honest, or to stupid to properly apply the numbers in a way that allows for a proper comparison, and I don't know which option is worse.