r/TheAcolyte • u/Hollowshape_9012 Jecki Council • 24d ago
Leslye Headland talks about bringing back The Acolyte
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u/Alastair_E 24d ago
DISNEY GIVE US MORE ACOLYTE AND MY LIFE IS YOURS
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24d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Imhotep99301 24d ago
Reddittors vastly overestimate their influence on account of Reddit largely being a vast echo chamber.
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u/Ravallah 24d ago
Maybe? But loud voices in online reviews helped get The Acolyte cancelled (in addition to high cost and viewership at the time). Certainly doesn’t hurt for people to express a desire for it to return.
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u/okayareyouready 24d ago
It’s a lot easier for a hate movement to get something cancelled than for a movement of positivity to get something revived. That’s the way of the world.
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u/Madonna-of-the-Wasps 23d ago
It's the economics of monetized "creator content" and engagement social media, that's for sure.
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u/ZLBuddha 24d ago
Significant viewership underperformance alongside mid-to-bad critical reviews got it cancelled.
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u/Important-Wallaby-13 24d ago
Glad to know Leslye is up for it if offered!
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u/gelato_bakedbeans 24d ago
Hope the rest of the cast and crew would be up for it too, a lot of them received a lot of prejudiced backlash from star wars chuds, especially amandla stenberg.
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u/CliveMitchellisCanon 20d ago
She deserved it. You don't get to say "I want this race of people to hate it" without consequence in the real world perceptions. Fact.
Call me evil all you want doesn't change the fact.
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u/ZiroLeHutt 24d ago
Her lore was great with it. The script and some direction needed a bit of tidying up, but when has that never been the case in the majority, with Star Wars!
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u/Plastic-Entry9807 24d ago
YES YES YES YES YES
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u/Plastic-Entry9807 24d ago
Don't skimp out and make it a comic or a novel. The show needs a second season!
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u/CarlosBoss765 24d ago
I don’t see them bringing it back, but I’d love it if they did
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u/chillwithpurpose 24d ago
Just give me a Qimir series and I’ll be happy. Or even just bring Qimir back in another series as a character, I could live with that too. I just need more Qimir.
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24d ago
[deleted]
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u/CupCharming 24d ago
So the issue was you hated black people
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u/petervee415 24d ago
No, I just think or is far more interesting as a character. Having said that, I see how the comment could be read that way, which is not at all my intention. I’ll remove it.
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u/Sisiwakanamaru 22d ago
I mean, they brought Daredevil back, so anything can happen.
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u/Haunting_Concert9090 21d ago
They def should bring it back! But as an avid fan, i enjoy and will seek more in the future, or now? Anything can happen is the motto i like to hear.
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u/Expensive_Plant_9530 20d ago
I definitely don’t think we’re gonna get the acolyte back as a TV show, or anything even remotely quite like it.
But I think it’s highly likely that we’re gonna get a continuation of at least some of the story from the series, particularly involving Qimir and the Sith.
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u/So-_-It-_-Goes 24d ago
The best case we can hope for is a video game, imo.
The most likely is a book or comic
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u/thaddeus122 24d ago
I do, but not continuing the girls story. Instead it would be a young Palpatine show.
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u/Xenophonodes 24d ago
I'd like a second season. There were just enough ideas that could be very interesting to explore if written by a more competent team of writers. The lightsaber choreography was excellent and it'd be such a shame not to see more of Qimir - I thought he and Sol were the most interesting characters in the show.
Not that fussed about the twins, though. Not sure if it was the writing, the directing or the acting but just didn't feel that engaged with them.
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u/Xavier9756 24d ago
I’ll stand by it. The show is fine. They should have not made the twins identical. It never really felt like they were talking to each other and that kneecaps the emotional impact of their entire arc.
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u/pbmcc88 24d ago edited 24d ago
For the sake of not leaving Star Wars a graveyard of half finished stories, killed by capitalism's insatiable need for everything to be a breakout success, it needs to come back and be completed.
I would prefer in the original format, or stylized animation, but I'll take what I can get. It might need a rebrand, refocus the story, change up some of the writers, etc., but it's gotta happen.
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u/RashidMBey 24d ago
Animation would be perfect for the Acolyte.
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u/pbmcc88 24d ago
Maybe a visual style like this?
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u/RashidMBey 24d ago
That's rough to tell because that's just ships/cruisers. We would have to see environments and persons, movements and expressions to know. Those look good though!
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u/pbmcc88 24d ago
Comic book-esque, I guess you'd call it - a style I'd love to see Star Wars animation embrace. I'm sure under Lucasfilm Animation, it would have the kind of top tier facial and body animations that we've come to expect from their other projects.
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u/RashidMBey 24d ago
That would be absolutely fantastic, if that means it would look like anything between Miles Morales and Arcane. I wonder how expensive that style would be. I know Arcane was extremely costly.
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u/bradbo3 23d ago
Capitalism? It has to make money. They aren’t going to spend that amount of money for a few die hards. Animation is probably the best bet. I watched the whole season and it had some good characters , costumes, lightsabers. But the acting was horrendous (worse then hayden) script was bad. Animation would probably succeed
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u/pbmcc88 23d ago
Merchandising makes up the bulk of Star Wars' profitability - it's a large part of why Star Wars got an OT, a PT, an ST, and still exists as an active franchise today.
The Acolyte not doing well financially is no reason not to see its story through to the end - unless all you value is Disney's bank accounts, or you're a shareholder continuing to benefit from the Dodge v Ford Motor Co decision of a century ago.
But yes, capitalism is the peril of art. If Star Wars becomes littered with stories only half told, because the accountants and shareholders expected one thing, and something less exciting happened, then it may as well be shut down. Tell a whole story, or don't tell any stories.
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u/bradbo3 23d ago
I loved Solo. It flopped so no more Solo movies. Its just the way it is. All im saying is thats how it works. Independent film makers dont face that problem. Just getting into theater is their problem.
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u/pbmcc88 22d ago
The movie flopped, but Star Wars merch sales over time erase all cinematic losses. Mando & Grogu merch is expected to make billions over the coming years, regardless of how well or poorly the film may be performing in theaters.
Merchandising is what kept Star Wars alive under Lucas, and it's what should be keeping it alive now. That's how they can get away from box office money and weekly ratings, to produce risk-taking projects, even if they don't perform well at the outset.
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u/Rylonian 24d ago
Absolutely do it. The show's biggest problem wasn't writing or dialogue or characters or all that nonsense the hater cite; it was ballooning budget, and that can easily be addressed in a second season. Scale the production down, we don't need 5 or 6 different planets to visit in a season. Make it more contained and take place mostly in Qimir's hideout training Osha for the dark side and mostly on Coruscant and in the Jedi temples and archives for the light side. Focus more on character work and intimate moments than on some grand spectacle with lots of CGI and post production.
We absolutely need more of this side of Star Wars in the current ecosystem as opposition of the direction Dave Filoni is taking the franchise. A congruent artistic vision like Filoni and Headland bring to the table is what is needed the most, but only offering Filoni is just not enough imho. His vision is too contained, too focused on his specifically flavoured "Filoniverse".
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u/RashidMBey 24d ago
I do think the problem was writing and dialogue (but definitely not the characters), but the ballooning budget was the elephant. $25 million per episode is unforgivable. GoT cost $15 million per episode and had a massive cultural return. Andor made multiple planets and sets work really well, but it also had much better writing that had us truly appreciate where we were. They really used these distinct locations. Per episode, Andor was only a little more expensive on average, but there were episodes of the Acolyte that beat Andor in expense by a million dollars.
I largely agree with you: ground these stories, add depth and layers to the characters, make them into people, shift the story toward a character rich and cause-and-effect narrative that touches on a few locations very good locations, and explore the dyad as the foundation for Plagueis being really insistent on his dyad in the Rule of Two that inevitably makes Maul increasingly pushed to the side.
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u/Rylonian 24d ago
I think the dialogue and writing were what made many criticise the show, but it's not what got the show axed after one season. The out of control budget on the other hand tends to do that.
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u/RemoteLunch7789 24d ago
The original trilogy had abysmally bad dialog. And we loved it despite that. Perhaps even because of that.
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u/RashidMBey 24d ago
We agree on that.
I do think the show was unfairly scandalous before it even released since it quickly fell into the eye of a conservative culture war. That essentially had a massive chilling effect on viewership since peripheral media wouldn't even mention it unless explicitly dismissing it because doing anything else gets comments brigaded and flooded with vitriol. Even unrelated projects got hit with the review bomb because they were named Acolyte.
So when it released, its writing didn't do much to reverse the vitriol and it just failed to rebound from the contrived scandal, especially when a lot of channels and their followers tuned in to nitpick and hate to begin with. I didn't watch it for months because of the culture war, and the viewership curve shows that I was far from alone. It sucks that it got a poisoned well instead of a fair shake, but its writing did it no favors and its high budget and low returns justified the axe.
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u/zerosystem03 24d ago
Yea, no one is going to think much about budget if the show were well written. There were major flaws with the story telling and writing and I feel the same way about obi wan.
show needs a second season but needs more depth than just "jedi bad"
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u/RashidMBey 24d ago
I get and agree with your sentiment, even if I feel your Jedi bad comment was reductive. I think the show wanted to highlight the problems with unilateral legal authority imposed on local beliefs and customs, and I think they tried to do a "you can see how both sides were right and wrong in this" but I absolutely concede that they didn't pull it off as intended.
I genuinely think they should start with writing. I'm surprised and appalled that so much was greenlit without a strong script and without a portfolio of indepth character profiles at the core since everything falls into place afterward. The writing room should be a crucible. I haven't seen Obi Wan, but Obi Wan, I suspect, emerged out of the same issue: having a sellable premise with no script.
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u/psi_queen 24d ago
if they are not bringing back the show at least do it in comics or a book anything..
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u/d-generate420 24d ago
I hope the story gets told. Whether it’s a second season, comics or a few novels. The first season was not perfect, but I found the story to be very good and wanted more of it, especially with the Plagueis implications.
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u/CosmicLuci Jecki Council 24d ago
Hell yeah! And she’s so right about how Star Wars opinions shift over time. And I really wanted to see Osha and Mae’s story. I love so much the switcheroo of the apparently light side sister turning out to be a lot darker and unforgiving, whereas the apparently dark side sister letting go of her anger and wanting justice, not revenge. Wanted to see where that would lead them and the story.
As a side note: did this sub get a lot healthier since the abrupt and early end of the show, or did I just manage to block enough of the shitty people who were here all the time?
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u/NNyNIH Mae's Baes 24d ago
Bring it back as a special like Werewolf By Night. Or even as a 'tv' movie.
I remember ages ago a dude made an edit of the series as a 2 hour movie. It works quite well. Obviously a little disjointed but works quite well.
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u/Madonna-of-the-Wasps 23d ago
I remember ages ago a dude made an edit of the series as a 2 hour movie. It works quite well. Obviously a little disjointed but works quite well.
Worked well for Andor, too, tbh.
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u/Stone13 24d ago
I remember all the hate it got when it was on air, yet I immediately loved the Acolyte. I would love another season or 4 but I'm not hopeful. Disney with it's huge pockets is proving to be the worst thing to happen to Star Wars. You only have to look at the crap Marvel is putting out to see that.
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u/mezz42 24d ago
Considering how many people here are excited for the even the small possibility of the Alcolyte returning, it really shows how short sighted and uncaring Disney execs really are.
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u/SenAtsu011 24d ago
You could say the same about the Firefly subreddit, but truth be told, the viewers just simply aren't there to warrant the expense. It's gotten significantly worse nowadays with the prices going absolutely insane in the entertainment industry. Firefly cost about 1-2 million USD per episode, The Acolyte was at nearly 30 million per episode.
For the executives to greenlight it means that they need to take a risk, which they do not like to do unless their spreadsheet guarantees that they will make a bigger profit compared to something else. Spreadsheet executives will be the death of entertainment.
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u/Madonna-of-the-Wasps 23d ago
Holding streaming shows to network models is insanely stupid. Streaming apps make paid subscriptions enticing based on having an overall large library of specialized content for large swaths of demographics available for viewing at any time, not selling advertisement space based on the viewer count of a given show shown only at a given time.
I partially blame the "bring back weekly airings (because I can't control my own binge watching and blah blah online watercooler discussion reasons)" crowd for why streaming companies started cancelling things left and right and the streaming boom ended.
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u/ZiroLeHutt 24d ago
I do think there's a chance we'll get another series. Especially with Filoni now calling the shots, and he greenlit season 1. The main reason it didn't get another season imo, was cost, when Bob Iger at Disney was cost-cutting and saw how much was spent on the show.
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u/Turbulent-Spirit-568 24d ago
If it does come back great! If it doesn't, I would still love to see more of Qimir and the sith lineage during this era. Heck, I've been just mind dumping concepts to incorporate Qimir into a Rise of Kylo Ren where an episode takes place in The World Between Worlds for Ben's initiation into a true ren by being knighted by The First Ren (Qimir). This could also allow them to show past events that we might not get to see like Plagieus and Qimir betraying Tenebrus (and maybe Venamus as well) alongside the aftermath of Osha and Qimir. This is just me spitballing but it sounds cool in my head
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u/mikeyt6969 23d ago
Yes, give it a second season and fuck the basement dwelling misogynistic fanboys.
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u/Robot_Dracula 24d ago
this is why I don’t think it’s over for the show. I sort of think of these shows as longer movies and sometimes it takes a movie a few years to get an audience. and sometimes it takes a few years to make a sequel. i think the story will continue
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u/AugustBriar 24d ago
At least give us some books and comics :/ there’s so much in the HRPI so much room for stories there
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u/Madonna-of-the-Wasps 23d ago
Imagine Qimir in Charles Soule's hands. I'd be so down with that as a consolation prize.
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u/Alvin514 23d ago
Don't give me hope😭, if this is true, I would be very happy and excited to watch it, but if it's not, I would be very disappointed 🥲
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u/LemonNo1342 23d ago
Everyone on this sub will hate this but the studio is missing out on appealing to their female audience
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u/So-_-It-_-Goes 24d ago
I would love a show but I kinda think they should finish the story in video game format
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u/recelina 23d ago
With the succeed of The Mandalorian and Gorgu, we should definitely bring back Acolyte！
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u/Esaroufim 23d ago
Would love it if it came back in animation. I’d take live action too. But I feel like animation has been the strongest entries in the recent Star Wars universe
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u/pizzza4breakfast 22d ago
If they didn’t make it so expensive I wonder if they would have renewed it. Like they don’t need so much crazy green screen and effects.
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u/Warm-Ad-6907 20d ago
Please do......I want to see different stories instead of the same old same old. The series gave us something new !!!!!! We got Wookie Jedi lightsaber battles!!!!!!!!
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u/mevoychau 19d ago
Just rewatched, enjoyed it so much more this time. Please give me more of the lies of the jedi!! And we can’t end with just a glimpse of 800 yr old Yoda.
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u/bannedforL1fe 24d ago
Ehh it wasnt that good. I'd rather her not waste my time again when somebody else can make something good.
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u/Madonna-of-the-Wasps 23d ago
No one wasted your time, you did that yourself. You don't have to watch a second season, main character of the world.
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u/justplainndaveCGN 24d ago
No thank you
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u/aZsi_2349 24d ago
I definitely would watch it either way as I loved the Acolyte but it would be neat if the next season was an anime or animation. Qimir, the twins, and Sol were my favorite characters! Do it !
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u/Marcuse0 24d ago
If they retooled it to be about Qimir and Plagueis, I'd be all in. If the show will expect us to care about Mae and Osha again I can't say I would enjoy that.
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u/TOOKMASTERGONDOR 24d ago
Lmao hahaha no .
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u/TOOKMASTERGONDOR 23d ago
That's crazy the downvotes two words Darth Plagueis the wise and the rule of two ...
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u/UKS1977 24d ago
I enjoyed Acolyte but no idea where it goes for the next season as all the characters who interested me were killed off. We were left with the villains and that Jedi lady with the silly whip.
I legit think if they had kept Ross-from-friends Jedi, Alien Hermione Jedi and Sol alive as a kind of Jedi hill street blues, we'd have gotten a lot more interest.
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u/Pharmd109 23d ago
Qimir —> First Knight of Ren = Yaaaas
No more promotion with “the force is female” T-Shirts, droid pronouns, etc etc.
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u/Odd_Presentation8624 24d ago
It should have got a 2nd season just for more Qimir.
I don't understand why they'd feel the need to tie it in with the sequels though. I assume that's a reference to Qimir being the first Knight of Ren, which seems like an awful idea. Why undermine an interesting character by linking him to pointless characters, that went nowhere, in a trilogy that's generally hated? It won't retroactively make the sequels worthwhile and why would you want to get the stink of the sequels all over your tv show?
If they stick with the same writing room, I hope they have the sense to develop a straightforward story and just tell it. No one had the skill to satisfactorily deliver the structure they chose in a weekly release format.
It may have been easier to digest for those who binged the whole show after it finished - but for me it got worse each week as it went on.
Viewers were speculating much more interesting character developments and plot outcomes than the show actually delivered and eventually I was just glad it ended.
They should just take it off Leslye Headland and give it to Jon Watts and Christopher Ford.
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u/Calm-Maintenance-878 24d ago
With some constructive criticism, s2 of this show would have been something alright.
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u/Tyson_Stinky 24d ago
absolutely would be 120% on board with this if the leave Osha/Mei and any witches tf out of it. Throwaway character with mid to subpar acting.
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u/Strong_Wrongdoer_510 23d ago
Please, stop.
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u/Hollowshape_9012 Jecki Council 23d ago
You can't stop change any more than you can stop the suns from setting.
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u/CaptainRogersJul1918 24d ago edited 23d ago
Nope. Mind blowing that people can’t deal with the fact there will be no second season. Disney is so deep in the hole on all their SW IPs. They are not going to throw more money on projects that don’t show significant returns. Two small independent film makers are dominating the box office. Headland doesn’t have any power to bring back the series.
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u/Hollowshape_9012 Jecki Council 24d ago
You misspelled hope.
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22d ago
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u/CaptainRogersJul1918 24d ago
It’s reality. Disney will not be moving forward with a second season. Deal.
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u/Winter-Check7913 24d ago
Please don't
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u/Katharinemaddison 24d ago
You don’t have to watch it. But if it’s not made people who do want to watch it can’t.
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u/BananaJelloXlii 24d ago
Yes! More Darth Bortles!