Star Wars Fans Agree: The Acolyte's Canceled Show Had 'One Of The Coolest Sith Ever'
A year after its cancellation, Star Wars fans are giving The Acolyte another look — and the consensus is clear.
One year after The Acolyte got the axe, Star Wars fans are doing the thing we all do with canceled shows: rewatching, reassessing, and wondering what could have been. And on one point, the hive mind is pretty much united — the MVP was Qimir.
The Qimir of it all
Manny Jacinto’s Qimir showed up as a smuggler and apothecary with great cheekbones and better banter, then the series pulled the curtain: he was the Sith Master behind Mae (Amandla Stenberg). The show also framed him as a former Jedi Padawan and a now-apprentice of Darth Plagueis. And because The Acolyte ended on a cliffhanger, we never got his real name or much else about who he actually is under the helmet. Classic.
Fans to the show: you followed the wrong lead
Reddit’s consensus reads like notes you wish the writers had seen in pre-production. The loudest refrain? We should have been in Qimir’s head the whole time, not orbiting it.
"The show was focused on the wrong characters. It should have been shown from Qimir's POV."
Plenty of folks echoed that, with one calling out that The Acolyte could have been a classic if Qimir led the story. Another dubbed him "one of the coolest Sith in the franchise," specifically because he’s charismatic and manipulative without being cartoonishly evil. Even people who weren’t sold on the series overall said they finished it for Qimir, Jedi Master Sol (Lee Jung-jae), and Padawan Jecki (Dafne Keen) — and yes, the lightsaber fights did in fact rip.
The path the show actually took
Instead, The Acolyte centered on twin sisters Mae and Osha (both played by Stenberg), separated as kids and sent down very different roads. That’s the emotional backbone the series chose. The retrospective love is mostly for the Sith circling that story.
The numbers that do not add up
Here’s the weird, inside-baseball part. The Acolyte was reportedly canceled for low viewership. At the same time, it landed as Disney Plus’s second most-watched show of 2024. Meanwhile, Rotten Tomatoes is a tale of two scores: a 19% audience rating (after heavy review-bombing) versus a pretty healthy 79% from critics. Make of that cocktail what you will.
What’s next in the galaxy
The Mandalorian & Grogu hits theaters on May 22, 2026. Between now and then, if you’re plotting your watchlist, I’ve got roundups of the other upcoming Star Wars movies and shows to keep on your radar.