Following Star Wars: The Acolyte's cancellation, star Amandla Stenberg has stated it was "not a huge shock"

The Acolyte was revealed to be cancelled on August 19, only weeks after its season 1 run ended on Disney Plus. While it worked well enough with critics, a sizable portion of the Star Wars fandom outright rejected it, citing plenty of s**t reasons and a few other complaints that were actually reasonable. Now, the show's (double) star, Amandla Stenberg, is finally speaking about the cancellation.

According to them (via Instagram), it was "not a huge shock" following the "rampage of vitriol that we have faced since the show was even announced, when it was still just a concept and no one had even seen it." They're not wrong at all about the obvious hate campaign that was staged against the series no matter the actual quality of it, but that doesn't even begin to explain why it was cancelled.

Last week, co-star Lee Jung-jae was far more restrained in his comments: "Honestly, I am hoping that maybe there could be changes in the future... Because you never know what’s going to happen. So on a personal level, I really hope we could get to see further stories of Leslye’s second season." Of course (spoilers ahead), he doesn't care that much since his character, Master Sol, completed his arc and died at the end of season 1 at the hands of Osha, his former apprentice. That said, it makes sense he's also quite disappointed about how things have gone down for a show he spent so much time working on.

Stenberg's comments also went beyond the matter of the hate they and other cast members, as well as creator Leslye Headland, received: "Even though, of course I’m very sad about the show being cancelled, and I’m sad about us not being able to give people invested in it more, I still just feel a lot of levity and joy around the fact that I got to experience it and that people loved it and that people were so responsive." VG247's Oisin Kuhnke thought The Acolyte ended up reaching a cool place even if it took its sweet time to properly start firing on all its cylinders. I must echo that sentiment, as I only really started to appreciate the show (flaws and all) past the midway point.

Renowned Hollywood insider Jeff Sneider, who's been pretty reliable when it comes to Lucasfilm and Star Wars, also shared what he knew about The Acolyte's cancellation, stating the decision was mostly related to low viewership numbers past the double premiere plus the extremely high production cost for eight episodes. Long story short: This was a big bet for Disney and Lucasfilm, and it didn't live up to lofty expectations.

Sure, the worst people circling the Star Wars fandom will use the series' cancellation as a personal win against 'the wokes' and all that crap, but in the end, The Acolyte simply was a decent show with a good bunch of cool ideas that just took too damn long to get truly interesting and paid the ultimate price. Now we can only hope The Stranger and Osha's story can be completed somehow somewhere. We'll even accept a comic book series!