Manny Jacinto finally breaks silence following The Acolyte's cancellation

This week fans were shocked to learn when it was revealed that The Acolyte was cancelled by Lucasfilm just after its first season. The Star Wars show that premiered back in June was the first live-action project set in the High Republic era. It followed the Jedi at the height of their power and investigating a murder mystery when a Jedi Master was murdered only to find something more sinister.

The Acolyte stars Lee Jung-Jae, Amandla Stenberg, Manny Jacinto, Dafne Keen, and more and ran for eight episodes. Its cancellation was first revealed by Deadline who said that the Leslye Headland series won't be returning for a season 2 on Disney+.

While the cast of the series didn't originally react to the news, actor Manny Jacinto who played Qimir in the series finally broke silence over the show's cancellation. The actor took to his social media to post a photo of Qimir and Osha (played by Amandla Stenberg) in the show standing next to each other and captioned it with a red heart.

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Why was The Acolyte canceled?

While Disney hasn't officially spoken about The Acolyte's cancellation, Deadline reported that it was due to poor viewership. While the show started off strong initially, it wasn't able to maintain the same viewership over the weeks and declined further which eventually caused it to be canceled.

Following Manny Jacinto's post, star Lee Jung-Jae - who portrayed Master Sol in the series, also opened up about its cancellation in an interview with Entertainment Weekly. While Master Sol died in season 1 of The Acolyte, the star was still excited to tune in for season 2 of the series and gave praise to Leslye Headland's work.

“As you know, my character had died already in the first season," says Lee. “So I wouldn't have appeared in the second season if there was one anyway. But personally speaking, I really loved Leslye’s writing. I thought that she was a great writer and director who was very talented in the storytelling, as well as creating characters and creating meaningful structures within the story. So I was actually personally really looking forward to watching a season 2 with her at the helm.”

He then continued by saying that he wished there were some changes so that the show could be brought back for a second season.

“Honestly, I am hoping that maybe there could be changes in the future. Because you never know what's going to happen. So on a personal level, I really hope we could get to see further stories of Leslye’s second season.”

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The Acolyte season 2 set-ups explored

The finale of The Acolyte season 1 set up major things for season 2. Most importantly, the show finally introduced Darth Plagueis at the end hinting that the Sith would have a role to play going forward. In the Star Wars canon, Plagueis is the master of Darth Sidious aka Sheev Palpatine, and in the show can be seen hiding inside Qimir's cave.

Alongside that, Yoda was confirmed to appear in season 2 of the show as well. He can be seen at the end of the finale and is the big reveal of the season. You can currently check out the first season of The Acolyte as it is streaming on Disney+ right now.