By Luke Khorshidi.

“I don’t like sand”

“Now this is podracing!”

“Luke, I am your father”

Without letting too much of the Star Wars shill in me come out, my point is though the Star Wars franchise has considerably declined since the glory days of the prequels and (dare I say) sequels, it is still a universally accredited and incredibly well known saga of movies and TV shows, recognised by billions across the world. It was always satisfying to see, that despite the fact that some movies were certainly better than others and online controversies galore, the saga still survived.

Well, until now.

Truth be told, the state of the Star Wars franchise now would make Grand Master Yoda’s force ghost curl up in horror. Most pinpoint the ‘downfall’ of Star Wars as the moment that Disney bought Lucasfilm and Kathleen Kennedy became Creative Director, supposedly beginning her ‘force is female’ agenda, but I, respectfully, disagree.

While I, enthusiastically, dislike Kathleen Kennedy and the direction she has taken the saga that once was my home away from home, it did not begin there otherwise the Star Wars Sequels would not have grossed $4 billion with only three films with even better critic reviews and higher viewership numbers than the prequels.

In my humble opinion, it began during the COVID pandemic and the abuse of ‘Original Disney+ shows’. Although Disney started out strong with TV shows on the new consumer market with global hits such as “The Mandalorian”, it quickly became obvious that the shows were in to stay and the movies were on the backburner.

This is when greed took over Disney (surprise, surprise) as quantity began to favour quality. After all, if you can push out triple the number of shows as movies in one year, (as we see with hit or misses like “Kenobi”, the “Book of Boba Fett” and “Ahsoka”) that’s more incentive for consumers to indulge in Disney+! This is where we compare Star Wars with Marvel. Disney essentially took the same strategy as Marvel after successful shows like “Wandavision” and “Loki”, wanting to get the quick bucks even quicker, similarly, resulting in poorly received shows such as “Ms Marvel” and the god awful “Moon Knight”.

Nevertheless, this is not the “Fall of Disney” and the reason for that is because Marvel managed to somehow recover, by realising quickly manufactured mediocre content will do them far more harm than good, sacking many of the minds behind the failed ‘Phase 4’ and reverting to utilising the Russo Brothers like they had done years prior and bringing back Robert Downey Jr as Victor von Doom, bolstering popularity of the MCU and lighting a much needed fire.

Star Wars, on the other hand, has seemed to go in the complete opposite direction. In response to the poor viewership numbers of latest shows , Kennedy stated they were boycotted because of “sexist” and “racist” fans with cast members of these shows even blaming the “alt-right”!

Maybe, though, it’s because they are pushing out subpar, rushed and poorly acted shows that fail to rack in half the views of “The Mandalorian”? Just a thought.

“The Acolyte” was Disney’s latest DEI series outside the Skywalker Saga which promised a breath of fresh air for the franchise, exploring the promising High Republic era with a thrilling murder mystery and the detailed rise of the dark side Sith explaining how the Jedi fell from galactic dominance and indulged in corruption and politics.

My excitement for this show was embarrassing at best. Instead, we received the most poorly acted and written show with every episode brutally destroying every ounce of intriguing lore clinging fans had left with the most boring and convoluted plot imaginable, finally, breaking the camel’s back.

To pretty much nobody’s surprise, this show became was received terribly, getting a rotten tomatoes audience score rating this mess 18%.

Even a Disney lightsaber stab couldn’t save this one!

Even the most popular Star Wars YouTuber, Star Wars Theory (3.3M subscribers), was astonished at the poor quality of this show, showing his frustration at the state of Star Wars repeatedly voicing to his audience that “we just want good stories.”

Ultimately, though, perhaps there is a glimpse of return for the franchise. The lack of viewership evidently spoke as “The Acolyte” was not renewed for a second season.

Is Lucasfilm finally understanding that their declining viewership can only be saved by manufacturing good and acclaimed content or, more likely, is money the only thing that talks?

Considering that next on the agenda is a rip-off “Stranger Things” show with cringe-worthy child actors in suburban streets, I’m inclined to think the latter.