Star Wars: The Acolyte being canceled after one season doesn’t seem to be enough for Disney and Lucasfilm: Fans are now noticing that the entire line of merchandising for The Acolyte has been pulled from the Disney Store, following the cancelation. A fan on Reddit posted an image of a Disney Store search for The Acolyte, which quickly went viral as people speculated (or simply jumped to conclusions) about what it meant. However, like so many things in business, it may not be the nefarious cutthroat move some fans want to see it as.
All merchandise for ‘THE ACOLYTE’ has been removed from Disney’s online store
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According to the receipts, some commenters are dropping, The Acolyte merch that was offered exclusively through the Disney Store was limited-release material, only. That means that it wouldn’t be out of left field for Disney to pull the material after the show’s run when demand for the merchandise would go through a natural drop-off. It’s also worthy of note that these Acolyte merchandising materials are no longer available in the Disney Store – but are certainly obtainable elsewhere. Case in point: The helmet worn by dark side warrior “The Stranger” (aka Manny Jacinto’s character Qimir) is probably THE most iconic thing to come out of The Acolyte – and it is certainly still available for fans to purchase from places like Amazon and Entertainment Earth.
There’s a fair reason that Star Wars fans are feeling paranoid about how Disney is handling The Acolyte. The announcement that the series has been canceled was a rare public drubbing from Lucasfilm, which has been typically closed-mouthed about the futures of Disney+ series like The Book of Boba Fett or Obi-Wan. Fans pretty much know that those series are probably not coming back – but there’s been no official confirmation of it. So for Lucasfilm to outright tell us that Acolyte is done can be read as the studio is not only pulling investment in the series but almost distancing the franchise from it. It smells similar to what Lucasfilm did after seeing the response to Rian Johnson’s Star Wars: The Last Jedi; the studio did an almost 180? turn with the next film, J.J. Abrams’ Rise of Skywalker, which almost went out of its way to invalidate everything that Johnson’s film tried to do with the franchise lore.
Star Wars has never been able to bridge the divide that was created between The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker – or restore faith that Lucasfilm has enough confidence in its material to weather any kind of blowback from fans. With The Acolyte’s cancelation, Lucasfilm isn’t doing anything to reverse that negative perception.
You can still stream Star Wars: The Acolyte on Disney+, and order items of merchandise online from various sellers (just not Disney).
