The acolyte was terrible from the first episode. The plot was bad, the characters were bad, it was barely grounded in Star Wars as an actual IP - meaning the IP could have come after the story was written it felt so irrelevant. Like it’s not just “we just fumbled the details and somewhere along the way a good thing got broken” it was big picture stuff in so many scenes. Like palpatine returning and creating death star ships and dying to lightning again doesn’t happen because a good script and good teams attempted to make a good film and something got mistranslated eventually, it was flawed from the start. Which is as upsetting as it is, for me personally at least, because the IP is a slam dunk gold mine of easy to tell and rewarding stories. I can’t even imagine being handed a 2 billion dollar easy payday to make a trilogy and having no artistic opinions about what is going to happen and what it’s going to mean.

I’m ranting again. Whoops. I could believe YouTubers have outweighted influence on a film’s production. I do not believe anyone involved in the Acolyte, especially higher ups who should be able to steer their own boat, could convince me that was what went wrong with that show.

A mature series about how the Sith convert people, even do some good via evil means, and make a case for why characters like Maul and Dooku and Ventress were converted would be fantastic. In fact Dooku has had some good development in the animated world showing a bit as to why and how he turned. There’s a gameplay trailer for a character I do not know, showing them being influenced by a powerful sith, and it’s compelling enough for what it is. Like, it’s clearly the rights holders are not artists or fans and the structures at play do not allow a good thing to be produced with any meaningful regularity. The only star wars rule nowadays seems to be the thing is bad from the start or, if it was surprisingly good, it will get run into the ground ASAP.