The Acolyte season 1: EP on ‘review-bombing’ trend

If you look at a lot of the audience discourse that is out there about The Acolyte right now, it is easy to call it pretty darn divided. A good percentage of critics have been favorable towards the Star Wars show, whereas online reviews from viewers have been anything but. Just look at Rotten Tomatoes or any other places that aggregates such numbrs.

Are there things to take away from this? Sure, but not all of them may be meaningful. The Acolyte is not a perfect show by any means; episode 3 meandered too much, and you can argue the story took too much time to get to its big reveal. However, the action sequences have been top-notch and while the presentation of Jedi here has been polarizing, we actually find it refreshing. After all, the show serves as a reminder that even the most heroic of groups are not immune from their share of corruption and negative influence.

So what does showrunner Leslye Headland have to say about all of this? Speaking to Collider, she indicates that it is not something worth being overly concerned about it:

“I understand the point of it, which is that the average viewer would look at the site and say, ‘Oh, the user review is really low.’ … But I think that, if you’re in the Star Wars fandom, I think you already know what review-bombing is. So I guess if you’re totally new to the fandom and you’re considering watching the show, it could affect you. But I also think that my work in the past has been very word-of-mouth anyway, so I don’t know if it… I think that because behind the scenes, we all know what it is – it’s not that it’s not concerning – but I think it’s pretty expected, I would say.”

Ultimately, our sentiment is that reviews could impact a certain percentage of viewers; however, we tend to think the majority of people out there are not terminally online, and will choose to check out a story regardless of what anyone says in a review. The real measure of the show’s success is viewership, and for latter episodes in particular, things are still vague.

Related – Learn more entering the next The Acolyte episode

What do you think about the reception to The Acolyte at this point?

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