Following the cancellation of Star Wars: The Acolyte, star Amandla Stenberg says it’s “not a huge shock”

The Acolyte’s cancellation was announced on August 19, just a few weeks after its first season ended on Disney Plus. While the show did pretty well with critics, a good portion of Star Wars fans flat-out dismissed it, citing a lot of crappy reasons and a few more that were actually reasonable complaints. Now, the show’s (two-time) star, Amandla Stenberg, is finally speaking out about the cancellation.

According to them (via Instagram), it was “not a huge shock” after the “unleashing of vitriol we’ve been dealing with since the show was announced, when it was still just a concept and no one had seen it.” They’re absolutely right about the obvious hate campaign that’s been waged against the show, regardless of its actual quality, but that doesn’t even begin to explain why it was canceled.

Last week, her co-star Lee Jung-jae was much more reserved in his comments: “Honestly, I hope that there might be some changes in the future… Because you never know what’s going to happen. So, on a personal level, I really hope that we get to see more stories from Leslye’s second season.” Of course. (spoilers ahead)he doesn’t care that since his character, Master Sol, completed his arc and died at the end of Season 1 at the hands of Osha, his former apprentice. That said, it makes sense that he’s also pretty disappointed with how things turned out for a series he spent so much time working on.

Stenberg’s comments also go beyond addressing the hate he, along with other cast members and creator Leslye Headland, received: “While, of course, I’m very sad about the show being canceled, and I’m sad that I can’t give more to the people who invested in it, I still feel a lot of lightness and joy around the fact that I got to experience it and that people loved it and were so receptive.” VG247’s Oisin Kuhnke thought The Acolyte eventually reached a cool place even if it took its time to start firing on all cylinders. I have to echo that sentiment, as I didn’t really start to enjoy the show (flaws and all) until about halfway through.

Jeff Sneider, a Hollywood insider who has always been very reliable when it comes to Lucasfilm and Star Wars, also shared what he knows about The Acolyte’s cancellation, saying that the decision was primarily due to low viewership after the double premiere and the extremely high cost of producing the eight episodes. Long story short: It was a big gamble for Disney and Lucasfilm, and it didn’t live up to expectations.

Sure, the worst people in the Star Wars fandom will use the show’s cancellation as a personal victory against the “woke” and all that crap, but in the end, The Acolyte was simply a decent show with a bunch of cool ideas that took too long to really get interesting and paid a high price for it. Now, we can only hope that The Stranger and Osha’s story can be completed in some way. We’ll even accept a comic book series!