Mentioning this show at this point is essentially like trying to take a nap on the third rail, but I’ve seen a narrative going around that I…don’t think is terribly accurate, as supportive of The Acolyte as I may be.
With the debut of The Penguin, HBO bragged that it got 5.3 million viewers in its first four days. The Acolyte fans correctly noted that the Star Wars series instead got 11.1 million viewers over five days. The idea here is that Penguin is being considered a big hit, but The Acolyte is a “failure” that ended up being cancelled.
That’s…not quite comparing apples to apples in this situation. Let’s add another million for another day putting The Penguin at 6.3 million over 5 days. In either case, it’s the biggest original show debut since The Last of Us for HBO. And mind you, HBO/Max is a smaller service than Disney Plus. By last count the combination of Max, HBO and Discovery+ had 103 million subscribers. Disney Plus has 153 million. So, more, though not double. Still, a factor to consider.
The problem with The Acolyte is what happened after the premiere. From the same article that was screenshot for the 11.1 million figure, by week 3 of the series, it dropped out of the top Nielsen top 10 completely. By the release of the finale, which returned to #10, that viewership was said to be the lowest of any other Star Wars show. Completion rates are a very, very key metric when considering a show renewal, as if a show loses a significant amount of viewers by the end, the indication is that not many people would show up for a second season.
In the case of what happened with The Acolyte, it did not help that its opening was the weakest part of the season, and millions of initial viewers did not make it to the likes of episode 5, it’s best entry, or beyond (the finale was good as well).
But viewership is not the only factor, as what was the biggest issue of all was the bloated budget Disney devoted to The Acolyte. We do not know how much The Penguin cost HBO, but it is presumably less than the incredibly VFX-heavy Acolyte that reportedly had a budget of $180 million, or $630,000 per minute of screen time. No one, even fans, understood how the show cost that much or should have cost that much. As a hugely expensive project drawing on zero known Star Wars characters, the viewership it would have need to have was almost impossibly high. This is mainly a problem with Disney budget bloat.
Yes, there was an intense culture war about the show and a huge division of opinion about its quality, but this has always come down to cost versus viewership. And in this case, a sharp decline over the course of the season where not enough viewers saw it to the end, a bad sign for renewal.
That’s why The Penguin is considered a hit with those views, and why The Acolyte, in the end, was not, despite a higher initial total. I get why some would want to make the argument, but it just doesn’t really work in this case.