“Star Wars” is home to an iconic family tree, battles, and music. But despite being one of the biggest franchises ever, it seems to be in more disarray than ever.
On Feb. 24, 2025, The Hollywood Reporter published an article saying that Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy would be stepping down and retiring at the end of the year. While some fans had been praying for this day since the release of “The Force Awakens” in 2015, the rumor was debunked just a few days later. Deadline reported that Kennedy has no plans to retire, and that she has films in the making that will keep her around “Star Wars” forever.
Since 2015, there have been numerous entries into the “Star Wars” franchise. Big hitters include “The Mandalorian,” “Obi-Wan Kenobi,” “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story,” and “Andor.” If someone were to average out the scores of every TV show and movie since 2015, “Star Wars” would be at about 68% when it comes to fan scores; the highest rated content is “Andor” and “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story” at 87%, and the lowest,“The Acolyte” at 19%. Since the launch of Disney+, “Star Wars” has released around two or three projects each year, and based on the audience scores on Rotten Tomatoes, many of them have had varied reactions.
One of the more recent shows, “The Acolyte,” is far and away the worst-rated show that Lucasfilm has produced. As mentioned earlier, it has a 19% audience score, but it has a very serviceable 78% rating from critics. When the ratings vary this much, it’s hard to know which to trust. However, “The Acolyte” was canceled after just one season.
Vulture.com quotes Alan Bergman, the co-chairman of Disney Entertainment, saying, “We were happy with our performance, but it wasn’t where we needed it to be, given the cost structure of that title, quite frankly, to go and make a season two.”
While Disney’s top executives are saying the show was canceled due to financial reasons, the lead actress of “The Acolyte,” Amandla Stenberg claims it was because of the online backlash the show was getting due to it having a female lead, and the show having queer undertones.
Toxic “Star Wars” fans are nothing new, and they’ve just been getting worse. It feels like under every social media post relating to the famous franchise, there is someone criticizing Disney for what it has done.
On Feb. 19, 2025, the official “Star Wars” Instagram account posted that “The Acolyte” had won “Outstanding Original Score for Television/Motion Picture” at the NAACP Image Awards. Even then, fans did not celebrate.
User corbin.burdette commented, “Space Balls felt more like Star Wars than this.”
Another user, f3rn8nez_ commented, “Please erase the acolyte from existence.”
While not all comments were like this, they were very common. Those two examples were found in the top four comments on the post that was supposed to celebrate “The Acolyte” and its achievements.
Users on Instagram are not the only ones who are slightly disappointed with how the “Star Wars” franchise has been performing over the last couple of years. Students right here at Millersville University have their thoughts as well.
In a survey done about “Star Wars,” 35.7% of Millersville University students said that their favorite era of “Star Wars” was the original trilogy, which spanned from 1977-1983.
