Right now, everyone is grappling with or celebrating Disney’s cancellation of The Acolyte, the ambitious but beloved and little-watched series that created a typhoon of culture war watched since The Last Jedi.
But the scenes, there’s now a story that extends beyond that, making it seem like Disney is almost completely backing out of big-budget, live-action Star Wars showcases on Disney Plus.
Daniel Richtman put this into practice, and he’s right. Now we’re at a point where yes, full-length Star Wars videos, regardless, are evolving again, but Disney Plus shows?Do you feel like you’re struggling with a single show that is now moving forward over the dozen we’ve seen.
Ahsoka
It’s not entirely different from Marvel. No’s unusual that the MCU Disney Plus series doesn’t have a second season, with rare exceptions like Loki. Some screens were meant to lead directly to videos like Falcon and the Winter Soldier and Ms. Marvel. Others have led to spin-offs such as WandaVision transforming into Agatha All Along. An independent series like She-Hulk has been canceled. We have no idea what’s going on with Hawkeye. Maybe there will be a season 2 of Moon Knight.
But there is a clear difference here: at least many other presentations have been announced. Daredevil will return with Born Again. Wonder Man and Ironheart arrive. Armor Wars would possibly be on hold. We are talking about a Nova series. Vision Quest will be another spin-off of WandaVision. Apparently he’s making a Wakanda series. With the return of Daredevil, we can also witness the return of Punisher, Luke Cage or even Jessica Jones from the Netflix era.
Star Wars? It’s much darker. Outside of The Mandalorian, it turns out that Disney probably hasn’t noticed the return on investment they were looking for in almost all of those shows, and they’ve obviously gone astray if they’re spending $180 million in a totally new, entirely new era. Character series like The Acolyte when he had 0% chance of being “worth” so much. I doubt Andor was ever refunded what he charges (apparently $250 million) in “value,” however, it was meant to be a two-year assignment. and at least he was so clever that he helped save some of Disney’s Star Wars-era reputation.
Disney gets lost in the woods with Star Wars and they realize it’s time to take a break. Yes, it would have been great if they could expand beyond the Skywalker era in some meaningful way, but with the death of the Acolyte, that becomes unlikely unless Mangold’s film is a huge hit. Or start adapting Knights of the Old Republic or something. But for now, it’s about to be a wasteland unless new things are announced soon. Maybe it’s for the best.
Follow me on Twitter, YouTube and Instagram.
Get my science fiction novels, the Herokiller series, and The Earthborn Trilogy.