Warning: SPOILERS for The Acolyte are ahead!
Earlier this week, a little over two months after The Acolyte premiered to those with a Disney+ subscription, and a month after its Season 1 finale aired, word came in that the Star Wars TV show was cancelled. Although the news prompted some horrifying trolling, there’s also many who are disappointed by The Acolyte not returning for Season 2. Lee Jung-jae, who played Master Sol, was among those surprising by the news, but he’s hopeful that corner of the Star Wars franchise could be explored again someday.
Obviously even if The Acolyte Season 2 had been ordered, Lee wouldn’t have been involved with it considering that Sol was killed by Amandla Stenberg’s Osha in the final episode. Nevertheless, he was looking forward to seeing what would have happened next with the surviving characters, telling EW:
Personally speaking, I really loved Leslye’s writing. I thought that she was a great writer and director who was very talented in the storytelling, as well as creating characters and creating meaningful structures within the story. So I was actually personally really looking forward to watching a season 2 with her at the helm. To hear the news, I was quite surprised personally as well. … Honestly, I am hoping that maybe there could be changes in the future. Because you never know what's going to happen. So on a personal level, I really hope we could get to see further stories of Leslye’s second season.
The Acolyte certainly laid the groundwork from another season, which included Osha agreeing to train in the ways of the Dark Side with Qimir, Mae having her memory wipe and ending up in the care of Vernestra Rwoh, Darth Plagueis making his first onscreen appearance, and Vernestra going to see Yoda, presumably to loop him in on the true story behind Sol, Osha and Qimiri, with the latter having been Vernestra’s former apprentice. Yeah, that’s a lot of plot threads to leave hanging, and I joined Lee Jung-jae in being surprised that they won’t be picked back up in Season 2. While Disney hasn’t provided an official reason for The Acolyte’s cancellation, it was reportedly due to low ratings.
This is the first of Disney’s Star Wars TV shows to be outright cancelled, as opposed to certain series being planned as one-season affairs, like Obi-Wan Kenobi and The Book of Boba Fett, or getting to end on their own terms, like The Bad Batch and the upcoming Andor Season 2. Since it’s unclear if Skeleton Crew, which premieres this December on the 2024 TV schedule, will be a miniseries or has the potential to continue into a second season, as with The Mandalorian Season 4 being up in the air now that 2026’s The Mandalorian & Grogu is on the upcoming Disney movies slate, that just leaves Ahsoka as the only ongoing Star Wars TV show that could keep going after its already-greenlit Season 2.
But like Lee Jung-jae said, perhaps stories tied to The Acolyte could still happen someday. Its time on TV may be done, but maybe the folks over at Lucasfilm would approve of those aforementioned plot threads being resolved in a book, if not a series of books, or as an ongoing comic book series. If this ends up happening, we’ll let you know.
