Star Wars Television

The Acolyte, Disney's newest Star Wars TV show, may be being review-bombed - but new viewership data gives a sense of what's really going on. The Star Wars fandom has always been prone to division, but Leslye Headland's Star Wars Disney+ TV show seems to have become a massive flashpoint. The Acolyte has been review-bombed on Rotten Tomatoes; the audience score there now stands at an improbable 14 percent (lower than the ill-fated Star Wars Holiday Special).

New viewership data from Variety gives a sense of what's really going on, though. Provided by Luminate, this data shows the minutes watched of every streaming original TV show over the period from June 7 to June 13. It's largely a boost for Netflix, but The Acolyte's performance is very interesting indeed.

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Still, Disney will be quite pleased with The Acolyte's performance here. The Acolyte is literally the only non-Netflix show to appear in the top ten for that period, suggesting it's a success. The scale of that success will become clear over the weeks, as we get a sense of whether viewers stuck around or dropped off.

It seems some Star Wars fans are accidentally review bombing the 2008 Australian horror film Acolytes instead of The Acolyte Disney+ series. The Acolyte is the latest live-action Star Wars series to air on Disney+, premiering its first two episodes on June 4, with new episodes airing weekly until the finale on July 16. The show has earned mostly positive reviews from critics so far, but it has been incredibly divisive among Star Wars fans, to say the least.

At the time of this writing, the Rotten Tomatoes critic score for The Acolyte is a respectable 84%, while its audience score is an abysmal 16%. Without delving into spoilers, there are Star Wars fans who are not happy about some of the creative choices in the show, feeling as though it doesn't fit with the rest of the Star Wars canon. Others are not impressed with the show's quality, and are unhappy at the direction the Star Wars franchise has been going in general. There are also some people who are upset that the show focuses on female characters and has a diverse cast.

Those unhappy with The Acolyte, whether it's due to legitimate criticism about the show's quality or anger over its "woke" content, have taken to Rotten Tomatoes to let their displeasure be known, spamming the series with low ratings to bring down its audience score. However, some individuals seem to have gotten lost, instead review bombing the 2008 Australian horror film Acolytes, which has nothing to do with the Star Wars franchise in any capacity. Now, the Acolytes film was never popular with audiences anyway; from what we can see using the Way Back Machine, it's gone from about a 42% audience score to a 33% audience score. Still, it does seem as though its score has been impacted by Star Wars fans who actually want to review bomb The Acolyte instead.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/2397087

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/2397084

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