Leslye Headland’s Wife Once Again Blames Fans for The Acolyte Cancellation, Touts Star Wars Show’s Ratings as Though They’re Something to Brag About

The cast of The Acolyte continue to tout the show’s ratings, despite the fact that objective numbers show that hardly anyone watched it. However, this group of people seem insistent on doubling down and trying to blame anyone but themselves or creator, showrunner, and Harvey Weinstein’s former personal assistant Leslye Headland for the show’s cancellation. Instead, Leslye Headland’s wife is putting the blame where it really belongs…on YOU…and I guess me.

(By the way this is an editorial so it’d gonna be a little more freeform than usual. Ready? Alright, here we go…)

The fallout from The Acolyte’s disastrous performance continues, but rather than accepting reality, Leslye Headland’s wife, Rebecca Henderson, has decided to lash out at fans. In a recent social media post, Henderson, who played green-skinned Jedi Master Vernestra Rwoh in the series (a casting choice that I’m sure had nothing to do with being married to the showrunner…), blamed The Acolyte’s cancellation on its critics and Star Wars fans while touting misleading data about the show’s performance.

Leslye Headland’s Wife on Instagram touting the supposed success of The Acolyte – Instagram

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Henderson shared a headline that promoted The Acolyte ratings, describing the series penned by her wife as the second most-watched show on Disney+ in 2024, adding the snide caption: “Tell me again they canceled the show because no one watched it and not because YOU KNOW WHY.”

Ya know what? Based on the obnoxious way she said that coupled with the fact that she has to be intentionally trying to mislead (and that this is an editorial where I, the editor, can say whatever I want), I’m only referring to her as “Leslye Headland’s Wife” from here on out. Capitalized as though it’s a proper noun, even.

While she didn’t elaborate on what “YOU KNOW WHY” meant, the implication is clear—Leslye Headland’s Wife appears to suggest that The Acolyte was canceled for reasons other than terrible ratings. And in the world of this cast that typically means racism and sexism. This echoes comments made by series “star” (a term that’s only appropriate because she burned out) Amandla Stenberg (who played two characters with one facial expression) and the always insufferable Jodie Turner-Smith.

But here’s the problem… Scroll back up to that image. You see at the bottom where it says “Read the Entire Report here”?

If you do, you’ll see that the very article she shared contains the truth about the show’s failure. Anyone who actually read it would realize that The Acolyte being Disney+’s second most-watched series is not a victory for The Acolyte—it’s a devastating and scathing indictment of Disney+’s struggles.

Because The Acolyte’s Rank on Disney+ means absolutely nothing.

Had LHW (I’m shortening it for brevity’s sake) or anyone else actually clicked on the full report (I’m assuming she did and is banking on the fact that you won’t), they would have quickly seen that being the second most-watched show on Disney+ isn’t something to brag about. It’s proof of how far the platform has fallen. As we previously reported, The Acolyte pulled in 2.7 billion minutes viewed, which might sound decent until you compare it to the industry standard.

A graph showing the Top 10 Streaming originals in 2024 – Luminate

The lowest-ranked show in the Top 10 streaming originals of the year, Netflix’s Love Is Blind, pulled in 7.3 billion minutes viewed. That’s nearly three times the viewership of The Acolyte. Meanwhile, Netflix completely dominated the rankings with seven of the top ten spots, while Paramount+ and Amazon Prime also made the list.

Disney+ was completely absent.

Let’s put this in simpler terms: If The Acolyte is the second most-watched show on Disney+, and yet it still wasn’t anywhere close to being a top-performing show in streaming, then what does that say about Disney+?

It says that Disney+ doesn’t have a single show capable of competing with Netflix, Amazon, or Paramount+ in 2024.

That’s not a flex. That’s an embarrassment.

The episode by episode breakdown of The Acolyte – Luminate

While LHW seems eager to mock fans, she conveniently ignores the fact that The Acolyte’s viewership actually collapsed over its run. As we previously covered, the show started with high numbers upon release (as most shows do), but it hemorrhaged viewers each week, steadily declining until the finale recorded the lowest viewership of the entire series.

You see, while it’s a good thing when your show starts with high viewership, it’s not great when that’s your peak. That’s actually the opposite of what happens when audiences are engaged. In a successful show, viewership holds steady or even increases leading up to the finale as anticipation builds. Instead, The Acolyte repelled viewers to the point that most of them didn’t even bother finishing the series.

The top streaming originals on Disney+ for 2024 – Luminate

When compared to Percy Jackson and the Olympians, which also aired on Disney+, The Acolyte’s performance looks even worse. Percy Jackson debuted nine days before Luminate started counting. Meaning its first epsidoes weren’t even counted in the Luminate 2024 report.

Yet it still beat The Acolyte in total viewership.

That’s how little interest The Acolyte generated despite Star Wars branding, a massive marketing push, and endless Access Media support.

What our friend LHW’s post truly exposes is not the success of The Acolyte, but the dire state of Lucasfilm and Disney+. The Acolyte was supposed to be a major ratings hit and a huge addition to Star Wars canon, yet it turned into one of the least-watched and most reviled projects in the franchise.

And while its failure is bad enough, the fact that it was still the second most-watched show on Disney+ tells us something much worse: Disney has no hits.

(Well, no original hits anyway. People seem to love Bluey…)

This is why The Acolyte being canceled wasn’t some grand conspiracy against the show’s “message” or its creators (though both of those things were truly terrible). It was a financial decision.

UK tax documents unearthed by That Park Place revealed that Lucasfilm and Disney shelled out a staggering £172 million (approximately $231 million USD) for the series’ production. With a mere eight episodes, this translates to an exorbitant $28.75 million per episode.

Disney co-CEO Alan Bergman said as much when he commented on the series’ cancellation.

“We were happy with our performance, but it wasn’t where we needed it to be given the cost structure of that title, quite frankly, to go and make a season two,” Bergman said. “So that’s the reason why we didn’t do that.”

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA – MAY 23: (L-R) Alan Bergman, Co-Chairman, Disney Entertainment, Kathleen Kennedy, President, Lucasfilm, Leslye Headland and Asad Ayaz, Chief Brand Officer, The Walt Disney Company and President, Marketing, The Walt Disney Studios and Disney attend the launch event for Lucasfilm’s new Star Wars series The Acolyte at the El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood, California on May 23, 2024. (Photo by Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images for Disney)

Disney+ isn’t in a position to keep hemorrhaging money on underperforming content, and with the Star Wars brand decaying faster than a Krayt dragon under the Tatooine suns under Kathleen Kennedy’s leadership, Lucasfilm is no longer able to sustain flops the way it once could.

It’s no surprise that Leslye Headland has now quietly exited her Netflix project The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, just as The Acolyte’s failure became undeniable. When Hollywood executives see that a showrunner’s latest project was not only rejected by audiences but also lost money for the studio, they tend to (or should… let’s be real, failing upward is a very real thing here…) move in a different direction.

Netflix, like Disney, isn’t interested in keeping showrunners around who can’t deliver results.

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA – MAY 23: Leslye Headland attends the launch event for Lucasfilm’s new Star Wars series The Acolyte at the El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood, California on May 23, 2024. (Photo by Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images for Disney)

Simply put, and I say this to LHW and the rest of her castmates: The fans aren’t the problem—The show was. You were. Your friends were. Your wife was. It’s your wife’s fault, Ma’am. I’m sorry to have to be the one to tell you this. And to soften the blow, I’ll let someone a little closer to home explain it to you.

Here’s what Leslye Headland had to say about the potential failure of The Acolyte ratings when speaking with The New York Times prior to its release.

“If it doesn’t succeed, it’s because of me,” Headland said. “That’s really scary to think about.”

If Leslye Headland’s Wife (I’m going back to her full God-given name because I’m wrapping up and want to make my point here) wants to lash out at fans, she’s free to do so. And the fans (and editors in chief of Entertainment News websites) are allowed to laugh at her about it.

The fact remains that The Acolyte was not a hit as the ratings will show. I’m fairly certain that myself and countless other content creators made more money off this show than Disney did. Because I’m pretty sure that if you made even $1 of profit off covering The Acolyte, then you officially made out better than anyone at Disney or Lucasfilm associated with this dumpster fire.

I’ll close by saying The Acolyte did not have strong engagement, and it wasn’t canceled for any reason other than poor performance.

No amount of snarky social media posts can change that reality.

If anything, Henderson’s outburst only reinforces what audiences already knew: the people behind The Acolyte weren’t interested in delivering a good Star Wars story. They were interested in pushing their own narratives and insulting the very fanbase they expected to support them. It’s no wonder that in the end, the audience walked away—and The Acolyte ended up exactly where it belonged: forgotten.

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