The Acolyte Rotten Tomatoes Grade
Now that the review-bombing campaign is over, there is evidence The Acolyte audience score is starting to rise. Designed by Leslye Headland, The Acolyte has generated quite some controversy. The newest Star Wars TV show underwent a rigorous review-bombing campaign on websites like Rotten Tomatoes, where it momentarily scored just 13 percent from a quite improbable 25,000+ reviews. Negative ratings for episodes before they ever aired demonstrated how unreal these ratings actually were.
Rotten Tomatoes Score Recovering from the Acolyte
The Acolyte episode 8 came out a week ago; now that the show is ending, the hate campaign appears to have stopped. Interestingly, though, the audience score on Rotten Tomatoes is now progressively starting to rise once more. Right now of writing, it has an unexpectedly 17 percent audience score. Though it's still not great, given the sheer volume of previously negative reviews, the audience's score rise is rather remarkable.
Reasons for Acolyte Audience Score Improvement
Partly, the rising audience score reflects the fact that The Acolyte's review-bombing campaign is essentially over. Driven by YouTubers and critical fans who objected to its being "woke," the first backlash always seemed rather synthetic. Such campaigns are only active for a period since the individuals engaged go on to their next hot topic. In these situations, a more accurate picture starts to show only once the show ends: when the fire and the wrath have calmed down.
For The Acolyte, there is also one other consideration: Leslye Headland is more familiar with the binge model she applied with likes of Russian Doll, whereas she is not used to weekly releases. The Acolyte might just improve when seen as a block; this is naturally only possible when the show ends, hence later reviews are more positive. Some of the Rotten Tomatoes comments, meantime, imply that viewers were pleasantly surprised but entered expecting something of low quality. The review-bombing meant their expectations were low and hence readily exceeded.
The Second Season of The Acolyte
Of course, the fascinating question is whether the review-bombing campaign will have succeeded in what was clearly its secondary campaign; to make The Acolyte season 2 more improbable. Disney really seems to have anticipated the reaction; Headland herself and Lucasfilm's Kathleen Kennedy both denounced racism and sexism in the fandom ahead of The Acolyte's premiere, in expectation of the unavoidable controversy. That implies the reaction had already been considered, and industry insiders have observed that studios are progressively discount audience ratings on review aggregates like Rotten Tomatoes.
The renewal of The Acolyte will not rely on Rotten Tomatoes or the like. Instead, it will rely on audience; thus far all data points point to The Acolyte performing at a decent level, albeit not a great one. Should a renewal decision be taken, it is likely that D23 later this year will be the announcement venue.
