The Acolyte’s cancellation constructs a dilemma for LEGO Star Wars

Star Wars: The Acolyte will reportedly not be getting a second season – and that leaves the LEGO Star Wars team with a tricky decision to make.

Per reports from Deadline, Disney has decided not to pursue a second season of The Acolyte, which debuted earlier this summer to a mixed response from audiences and falling viewer numbers as the weeks went by. The show’s climax is believed to have enjoyed the lowest numbers of any Star Wars series finale, and while showrunner Leslye Headland seemingly had big ideas for a second season, those will never come to pass.

This is uncharted territory for the Star Wars universe. It’s not the first time a project has performed poorly enough to prompt Lucasfilm to pull the plug on any planned follow-ups – Solo: A Star Wars Story would like a word – but it is the first time the studio has left things on such a major cliffhanger, with so many unresolved threads that will now never be tied up on-screen.

Comic books and novels will presumably fill in the gaps, as the High Republic era returns to the mediums in which it began, and Disney shifts its focus to its upcoming slate of Star Wars movies hooked to Rey, The Mandalorian and the dawn of the Jedi Order. But that doesn’t help the LEGO Star Wars theme, which now faces a dilemma: should it play catch-up on The Acolyte, or ignore it altogether?

The design team’s strategy around new Disney+ shows has generally been to play things safe. The Mandalorian didn’t begin getting much attention until after the show had already started resonating with viewers, while Andor – another unknown quantity – only received a single set in time for release (and has never been revisited). By contrast, the two shows revolving around established fan-favourite characters – Obi-Wan Kenobi and Ahsoka – have both enjoyed full waves of sets.

Perhaps the only odd duck in the entire line-up is the sole set for Star Wars: Skeleton Crew, 75374 The Onyx Cinder, which is available already months ahead of the show’s release date and has a surprisingly large budget for a series that has yet to prove itself with audiences. But that outlier aside, the total absence of sets for The Acolyte – which not only revolves around new characters, but an entirely new era for Star Wars on screens – was not altogether surprising.

Now that the show has come and gone, and is seemingly already dead and buried, it would be easy for the LEGO Group to write off the notion of producing any sets based on the adventures of Mae, Osha, Sol, Qimir and the gang. But news of the series’ cancellation comes a month after its final episode aired, and given how long LEGO sets typically take to design and develop, there’s a small chance that the LEGO Star Wars team already had the ball rolling on some kind of tie-in for The Acolyte.

These are pretty toyetic characters after all, twirling lightsabers in all shapes, sizes and colours, with a heady mix of human and alien species making for a pretty diverse cast (with new Jedi costumes to boot). And then there’s The Stranger’s helmet, which is crying out for both a minifigure and a buildable bucket, and the various ships and planetary battlegrounds that featured across The Acolyte’s eight episodes. In essence: the designers aren’t short on material to plunder.

Leaving all that on the cutting room floor is undoubtedly not going to sit well with those who did enjoy The Acolyte (and are now ruing the discontinuation of its story), but the LEGO Star Wars team’s strategy around these shows doesn’t inspire much confidence that they’ll dive into this setting in 2025 or beyond. Yet if they don’t, it would mark the first time a live-action Star Wars series has been completely ignored by the LEGO Group.

And in a year spent plugging gaps in the LEGO Star Wars character line-up with its 25th-anniversary bonus minifigures, should the designers really choose to ignore this show altogether? Therein lies the dilemma…

Let us know in the comments if you’d like to see LEGO Star Wars: The Acolyte sets now that the show isn’t getting a second series, or if you’d prefer to see this one left behind.

Support the work that Brick Fanatics does by purchasing your LEGO using our affiliate links.

Author Profile

Chris Wharfe

I like to think of myself as a journalist first, LEGO fan second, but we all know that’s not really the case. Journalism does run through my veins, though, like some kind of weird literary blood – the sort that will no doubt one day lead to a stress-induced heart malfunction. It’s like smoking, only worse. Thankfully, I get to write about LEGO until then.

Latest entries

• 71047 Dungeons & Dragons11/09/2024LEGO Dungeons & Dragons designer walkthrough: Szass Tam and Mindflayer
• News11/09/2024First look at LEGO Ideas 21352 Magic of Disney
• News10/09/2024Cryptic LEGO 2025 rumour appears to tease Star Wars, Lord of the Rings and more
• 71047 Dungeons & Dragons10/09/2024LEGO D&D designer secrets: Barbarian Dwarf and Dragonborn Paladin