How ‘The Acolyte’ Beat Star Wars’ ‘Skeleton Crew’

Star Wars having a bit of a resurgence right now. A lukewarm reception of the third season of The Mandalorian in 2023 was followed by Ahsoka which was only slightly better received by the audience. The nadir was last year The acolytethe worst reviewed Star Wars show in history. So come Skeleton Crewwhich captured the hearts of fans with its 1980s-inspired story. However, it does not seem to have been enough to make its mark.

Skeleton Crew stars Jude Law as a speedy space pirate who has mastered the almighty force and befriends a group of kids trying to find their way home after getting lost in the galaxy. The eight-part Disney+ streaming series is a coming-of-age story with similarities to the beloved 1985 adventure film The Goonies.

Like The Goonies it has been a hit with fans and critics alike. After seven episodes Skeleton Crew has earned an impressive 91% rating from critics on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, while audiences have awarded it a respectable 80%. However, word of it does not seem to have spread far Skeleton Crew failed to enter Nielsen’s Top 10 Original Streaming chart in its first two weeks.

Surprisingly enough Skeleton Crew did not qualify despite debuting its first two episodes on the same night. During its premiere week, the bottom spot on Nielsen’s list of streaming originals was occupied by The Great British Baking Showwhich was watched for 382 million minutes, which means that Skeleton Crew came to less than that.

This sets the average per episodes under 191 million minutes, making it lower than the 244 million for each of them Acolyte’s two first rounds, both of which appeared on Nielsen’s top ten list. There may be a good reason for that Skeleton Crew was not so lucky.

The female-focused cast of The acolyte leading to it courting controversy before it was even launched. This led to the show being branded woke and was bombed by critics. In turn, its cast and showrunner Leslye Headland had to defend its diversity and inclusiveness throughout the show, keeping it in the public eye.

That might explain why Acolyte’s the finale returned to Nielsen’s Top 10, albeit in the bottom spot, despite the show being far from perfect in line with its 78% critic rating on Rotten Tomatoes and its much lower audience score of 19%.

The questionable caliber of the show got people talking, just like this writer’s revelation that it cost Disney a staggering $207.8 million to make. What’s more, its diversity appeared to be only skin deep as a follow-up report revealed that only 30% of the 695 employees at the show were women, and across the entire workforce, women’s average hourly pay was 19.4% lower than men’s.

That fueled even more media coverage, as did Disney’s decision to scrap plans for a second season just over a month after the curtain came down on the first. At times The acolyte became the talk of the town, and Disney made the most of it. As user Robert V wrote the X, “I saw ads for Acolyte after it was cancelled!”

With so many talking points, that’s perhaps no surprise The acolyte was rarely out of the media during its run. As the chart below shows, 4,911 articles are mentioned The acolyte last year with a whopping 34.6% of those coming in June when the show premiered. In contrast Skeleton Crew was mentioned only 2,895 times in 2024, with the peak during the December debut being 21.5% lower than Acolyte’s numbers in the month it was launched.

The data comes from Factiva, a search engine owned by Dow Jones, which spans more than two billion articles from 33,000 news, data and information sources in 32 languages. Factiva is constantly updated, so its archive is as extensive as they come.

There are two reasons for the dominance of the media The acolyte caused a disturbance in the strength of the Skeleton Crew. First, it sent a signal that Star Wars may be past its prime. Second, it led to Star Wars fatigue makes the media less inclined to write about a solid show with no controversial angles so soon after one that became famous for all the wrong reasons.

As a result Skeleton Crew has only attracted 59% of the coverage that The acolyte got and it doesn’t seem to have been watched that much despite being far better reviewed. Many potential viewers may not even know it’s playing, and it might as well have The acolyte to thank for it. With only one episode left, they won’t have long to find out.