“The Acolyte” and the long-awaited end of review bombing

You know you’ve immersed yourself too deeply in the YouTube fandom when you can’t remember which guy with the expensive microphone told you what while talking directly into the camera.

Earlier this week, however, I was drawn into that very Sarlacc trap. Word had spread that fans were review bombing. The Acolyte on Rotten Tomatoes and curiosity got the better of me. First, I watched this video of the guy with the microphone claiming that Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy doesn’t like Star Wars fans and “that (Lucasfilm) was attacking fans before the show even aired, to show them that they knew they had a bunch of garbage.”

Another person wearing a baseball cap noted, “The main reason this show is such a debacle is because it doesn’t feel like Star Wars… Fans like me – long-time fans like us – don’t buy this crap. This is garbage, and we need to call them out for it.” He then went on to explain, “The very things fans are complaining about are the very virtue signaling that the Hollywood establishment has invested so much in that they just can’t accept that audiences won’t respond to it.” The video’s narrator concluded that the industry blames the review bombing.

It’s hard to say whether any of the YouTube experts were “right” or “wrong”—and if you were, you’d certainly be the subject of the next analysis video. (Fast forward to 13:51 and you’ll see Carrie Fisher yelling at my floating head.) I’m going to say this: right now, everyone is arguing about arguing.

To illustrate, the following happened: The Acolyte hit Disney+ on June 4. Its critics score on the Tomatometer was somewhere in the 80+ percent range — not quite “Certified Fresh,” but pretty solid. In the weeks since, its audience score has dropped sharply and is now around 13 or 14 percent, leading to reports that the show has been critic bombed, that is, malicious negative viewer reviews. With some reports linking this barrage of poor reviews to the show’s diverse cast and LGBTQ+ themes — er, “lesbian space witches” — there has been debate about whether the poor reviews were coming from homophobic, racist, or misogynistic corners of the fanbase.

Last week, The Hollywood Reporter asked showrunner Leslye Headland (Russian doll) about the reaction to the show. Headland clarified that she did not consider her show to be “queer with a capital Q,” but said it was disheartening “that people think if something is gay, that’s bad… it makes me sad that a bunch of people on the internet are somehow destroying what I consider to be the most important piece of art I’ve ever made.”

These comments led to a series of reaction videos, and that’s how I ended up down the YouTube rabbit hole. Each video I watched had many nuances, but one theme kept cropping up that seems to be at the heart of the problem: reviewers aren’t fanatics, they just think The Acolyte is garbage and “not Star Wars”; Disney’s ownership of Lucasfilm is ruining the franchise and these pissed off fans are posting reviews to point out the series’ many flaws.

Taking this at face value, I just want to say, uh, OK? Putting aside my personal feelings about the quality of the show (I’m a bad queer person who didn’t watch The Acolyte Yet despite the instructions in this month’s Gay Agenda newsletter (after my YouTube foray, I’m not sure if I’m a good or bad Star Wars fan for skipping this show), another argument can be made: Sometimes franchises have bad parts—or just parts that not everyone likes—and that’s OK.

Star Wars, like all brilliant creations, derives its genius from its malleability. George Lucas’ world-building thrives on the fact that everyone can imagine what is happening three star systems away. Lucas himself reinforced this by turning to various writers and directors to The Empire Strikes Back And Return of the Jedi. Disney may have overdone it a bit with the amount of content it has produced since its $4 billion acquisition of Lucasfilm in 2012—even CEO Bob Iger has admitted as much—but to try to claim that this is an untouchable franchise that shouldn’t be repeated is ridiculous.