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’s important to note that Netflix TV shows are boosted by this specific metric. The streaming giant release multiple episodes at a time, whereas The Acolyte - the only entry from any other streaming service - only dropped a single episode last week.”
It will be interesting to see what happens after the show ends on July 16th.
I watched the first two episodes and went:
a) Well that’s a waste of Carrie-Anne Moss.
followed by:
b) I can wait until all the episodes are released.