The High Republic Is A Gold Mine For Star Wars - And The Acolyte Wasted What Could Have Been

The powers that be at Disney and Lucasfilm recently decided not to move forward with "The Acolyte" season 2, meaning the Disney+ "Star Wars" series will instead be a one-and-done. That's going to leave fans feeling many different ways, to be certain, not least of all when it comes to the many plot threads left dangling by the "Acolyte" finale (which may or may not eventually be picked up in another medium). More than that, it's highly likely that Lucasfilm won't be rushing to make more live-action "Star Wars" projects set during the High Republic era. That, in my humble opinion, is the real tragedy here.

The High Republic, for those who may not be familiar, started as a publishing initiative by Disney and Lucasfilm. Launched in 2020, it aimed to tell a connected series of stories largely through books and comics set in an era when the Jedi were at the height of their power. The High Republic was described ahead of the launch as a "golden age" and a "hopeful, optimistic time, when the Republic and the Jedi are noble and respected." Author Charles Soule also said at the time that the driving force behind the initiative was always "New, new, new. What have we never seen in Star Wars that still feels like Star Wars?"

Series creator Leslye Headland deliberately chose to set "The Acolyte" in this largely unexplored era. A great many "Star Wars" fans have practically begged Lucasfilm to move away from the Skywalker Saga and the characters we've been familiar with for decades. Headland's idea of having the show take place in the High Republic period – i.e. roughly 200 years before the events of "Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom Menace" — seemingly solved that problem. However, Headland also made the somewhat peculiar choice of having "The Acolyte" pick up about 100 years before "The Phantom Menace," putting it at the very end of this era.

What I am not here to do is debate the merits of "The Acolyte" as a show. Disney decided to cancel the series based on a variety of metrics that will probably never be made public. What we know for sure is that the audience score on Rotten Tomatoes is a mere 18%, which undoubtedly includes a strong showing from the worst sections of the "Star Wars" fandom. Whatever the actual reasons may be, Lucasfilm is all but assured to leave the show's characters and, more to the point, its setting behind so far as live-action goes for the immediate future.

The shame of that is the untapped potential that still exists in the High Republic era. Sadly, Headland's series only scratched the surface, focusing largely on the Jedi's power being called into question, combined with the dark side re-emerging. The appeal of the era in the books and comics is that whatever threats do emerge at the peak of this time period don't remotely resemble the Sith. It's truly something different, which is the big thing that's missing from live-action "Star Wars" right now. Indeed, so much of it has had to live in the shadow of what's come before, even successes like "Andor" and "The Mandalorian."

In the first phase of High Republic books, sentient plant-like creatures called the Drengir and a debaucherous group of marauding anarchists known as the Nihil serve as the villains threatening the galaxy. It's not about lightsaber-on-lightsaber action, but something truly new. More than that, it's something fresh that can exist without much baggage. Yes, Yoda was alive at this time but, aside from that, stories could be told without treading on what currently exists. It could be a new onboarding point for fans both new and old. That opportunity may be gone now, though, at least for the time being.

Right or wrong, it's easy to imagine Disney taking the lesson here — that the High Republic, or any "Star Wars" stories devoid of certain familiar elements, are not worth taking risks on.

Granted, Disney and Lucasfilm have a film in the works from James Mangold that will focus on the dawn of the Jedi, but that seems to be years away. In the meantime, it's going to be a lot of "Star Wars" that pulls from characters and eras that audiences are already intimately familiar with.

Case in point: Jon Favreau is currently filming "The Mandalorian & Grogu" (which will hit theaters in 2026), with Dave Filoni also working on a "Star Wars" film set during the "Mandalorian" era of the franchise. Not to mention the upcoming film focusing on Daisy Ridley's Rey rebuilding the Jedi order in the wake of "The Rise of Skywalker." All of these are playing in areas of the sandbox that've already been played in quite a bit before. "The Acolyte" was one of the few things on Lucasfilm's slate that dared to venture fully into unexplored corners of the sandbox, only to ultimately circle back to familiar ground via a shot of the back of Yoda's head and an appearance by Darth Plagueis.

That goes back to the decision to have "The Acolyte" take place near the end of this largely unexplored era. The only good news there is it means Lucasfilm could (major emphasis on "could") go back to the heart of the High Republic to do something truly different with "Star Wars" and legitimately go where no other live-action show or movie has gone before. Unfortunately, much like the lesson Disney and Lucasfilm took away from the failure of "Solo: A Star Wars Story" at the box office was "People don't want individual character movies," the lesson they're probably going to take away from this is "People don't want new Star Wars" (or something to that effect).

Tragically, that also means the full promise of the High Republic shall remain untapped until further notice. Just look at the jaw-dropping "Star Wars Eclipse" trailer to get a mere taste of what this era could bring to the table. Instead, we're going back to the well for more Skywalkers and more Baby Yoda, for better or for worse.

"The Acolyte" is streaming in its entirety on Disney+.