Disney+ 'Star Wars' Series Axed After Just One Season

Disney+ has opted to not move forward with a second season of its latest Star Wars spinoff series, The Acolyte, just a month after the eight-episode first season wrapped.

The series, from creator, director, executive producer and showrunner Leslye Headland, was a prequel set about 100 years before Star Wars: Episode I—The Phantom Menace in the Skywalker Saga era. It followed a respected Jedi Master (Lee Jung-jae) tasked with investigating a series of crimes that brought back him in contact with his former Padawan learner (Amandla Stenberg), with whom he uncovers "sinister forces" and shadowy secrets.

Sources told Deadline exclusively that Lucasfilm decided not to proceed with a second season of the prequel series.

Though The Acolyte generally won over critics with a 78 percent fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, Star Wars fans were quite unsurprisingly divided, as they are wont to be, giving it a 31 percent audience score. Viewership likewise took a hit as a result.

The series pulled in a respectable 4.8 million the day its first two episodes launched on June 4 and after five days had claimed to 11.1 million. However, by week three it had dropped off from the Top 10 altogether. It briefly reemerged in the 10th spot after the finale dropped, which clocked in at 335 million minutes streamed, which is believed to be the lowest viewership for a Star Wars series finale.

Considering that these high-end, big-budget Disney+ Star Wars series cost well over $100 million per season to make, a second season seemed unlikely even considering the sunk-cost fallacy.

In addition to starring Stenberg, and Jung-jae, The Acolyte also starred Manny Jacinto, Jodie Turner-Smith, Dafne Keen, Rebecca Henderson, Charlie Barnett, Dean-Charles Chapman, and Carrie-Anne Moss.