Today on the 5: The Acolyte, Disney's latest entry in the Star Wars episodic catalogue, recently concluded what appears to be a first season of a potentially longer series. I've had a few people ask me if I've seen it, and my answer was the same as it is for any other streaming series.
Ozone Nightmare
Let's See How It Ends
Welcome to your daily five, for Thursday, July 18th, 2024. I've had more than a few people message me in the last month or so asking me if I was watching the newest Star Wars streaming series on Disney Plus titled The Acolyte, which has had, boy, quite an interesting discussion around it since I think what episode three or four, wherever they brought in the, the, and I don't know if this is a spoiler, but I don't think at this point with the amount of posts I've seen about it, it could be the Sith witches, which apparently some people got very upset about for, in some cases, very, very different reasons, none of which I could care any less about. I really don't understand why people got so upset about this outside of the stupid reasons. But when I was asked about that, my response has been pretty much universal to, no, I'm not going to watch anything until I know it ends, until I know what the finale is like. And that really is kind of a two part answer. One is, does the series have an ending that is self contained? Because at this point, and I've said this before, and so I've done fives more than a few on this, I don't trust any of these services to keep any series going, whether it's good or bad or does good numbers or bad numbers. And I know some people say, well, we really don't know what the numbers are on some of these series. But yeah, that's true. But you can definitely tell that there have been successful and well love series that are canceled nonetheless. And fundamentally, I just don't trust any of these services to keep these things going, especially if they're really good and they look like they're expensive. Well, they might, I mean, one of the few exceptions that might be the Amazon Lord of the Ring series only because they've already spent so much money on it. At this point, they can't just give up on it. They have to at least be able to produce, they've committed to what five seasons of that. That might be a rare example where you could rely on more seasons on it. But even then, do I have any faith that it will end in a satisfying way? No, I don't know. I've heard opinions all over the place on that series. I luckily have no big tie to it. So I'll probably watch it assuming it does not tank the very end season finale or series finale. But the accolade was kind of the same thing. I went, okay, they're setting this way before in between the events of the High Republican Old Republic, which is good. They're trying to get away at least partially from doing the same old stories and the same old timelines we're aware of. The premise and some of the episodes synopsis sounded interesting to me. Again, I had no problem with four switches. And apparently the season finale came out in the last week or so, it must have, not the last couple of days. I really don't know the timing because I've just seen things about it everywhere. And I've looked at six or seven reviews of it. And in general, the consensus seems to be that it was either okay or terrible. I mean, that's the range. I haven't seen anybody saying it's exceptional. So that's fine. I mean, that's all just opinions. It doesn't matter to me. People will interpret different things differently. But in reading it, it appears that they are setting up future seasons. And so I thought, okay, well, I'm not going to watch this because it doesn't have what appears to be an entirely self contained ending by any stretch. And nothing I seen, I have seen so far indicates that there's only like a little bit of cliffhanger, but it's mostly completed. It sounds like it's a setup for another season at least. And we don't really know if it'll get that because the response to it has seemed mixed. I haven't seen just universal acclaim that in a similar way to say Mandalorian season one, which was probably the last time I remember a modern Star Wars, anything coming out and everybody generally reacting very well, including me. I mean, I still have my problem with the fact that we don't see his face. But that doesn't tell him that doesn't mean I don't recognize the quality of the show. But of course, even that series seem to go and veer way off into, well, let's just do nostalgia now stuff by season three. And so I'm not really sorry I jumped off that bandwagon. I don't feel like I've missed anything. And that's kind of my same approach to acolyte. I don't necessarily take bad reviews to mean anything because I certainly like things that other people think are terrible. But until the series seems to indicate it has a finale, a true series finale where everything is wrapped up. And until I know what the nature of that wrap up is. And I do think even if even if people didn't generally like it, there are certain things that I can figure out from reviews, whether it indicates that there are serious issues or not. But regardless, for all we know, this thing will never get a season two. I mean, you sort of assume it well because it's Disney and Star Wars, but that's not guaranteed. We may never see it. Certainly Book of Boba Fett was set up for a second season. And due to the response to that, it never went anywhere and probably never will. It may become part of Mandalorian somehow, but I'm not even sure that. So as far as the acolyte, honestly, the reviews don't even matter. It's what has trumped everything has been my inherent distrust for streamers to keep series going. And until something with that changes, then my general response to this question is going to be the same. Yeah, let's see how it ends later.