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‘Star Wars: The Acolyte’ Has Been Review Bombed, and the Reason Has Nothing to Do with the Quality of the Series
Social networks have been filled with racist and misogynistic comments and videos, something that was foreshadowed even before the premiere.
As soon as the first trailer was released, it was clear that Star Wars: The Acolyte would stir up a certain part of the fandom. Social networks exploded and YouTube and TikTok were filled with videos with misogynistic and racist comments: that if the woke agenda, that if the saga is dead … come on, what has been heard for some time to this part. The first two episodes of the Disney+ series are already on the platform, and the reactions have not been long in coming. On Rotten Tomatoes, the latest by Leslye Headland has debuted with a 92%, a score that shows that it has pleased critics in general. In the user section, however, the story is completely different: it has received an anthology review bombing.
No other ‘Star Wars’ series, even the most criticized (‘The Book of Boba Fett’ and ‘Obi-Wan Kenobi’), has been received with such virulence. In fact, the explanation goes beyond the quality of the series: the reason is the same that was already hinted at before the premiere of ‘The Acolyte’, when some users of social networks began to complain about the diversity of Jedi initiates in the scene of the Jedi Temple of Coruscant. There were people who criticized the presence of women and the supposed absence of straight white people. Of course, none of these sequences indicated the sexual identity of these characters. But what is even stranger is that it is so surprising that in such a large galaxy there is such a diversity of species, skin colors, body types, and so on.
‘Star Wars’ has a history of this kind
Sadly, this is not the first time that the most toxic part of the Star Wars community has orchestrated campaigns of this nature, some directly targeting actors and actresses from the films and series: Ahmed Best - Jar Jar Binks in the prequels, Master Kelleran Beq in ‘The Mandalorian’ - was one of the first to suffer in the flesh. Kelly Marie Tran, Rose in the sequels, was viciously attacked by this group of people. Meanwhile, showrunner Leslye Headland has been blunt, asserting that she does not consider fans to be those who engage in these practices: “I do not consider fans to be those who resort to bigotry, racism and hate speech.”
‘Star Wars: The Acolyte’ premiered on June 5th with two episodes. The first season will have a total of eight episodes. Although the show has not yet been renewed, Headland already has ideas for continuing the story in the future.