‘X-Men’ Reboot Star Dafne Keen Reveals Just How Wild ‘The Acolyte’ Season 2 Would Have Been
Disney’s live-action ‘Star Wars’ output has slowed considerably in recent years, with the streamer pulling back on new series after a run of shows that failed to fully connect with audiences. Among the casualties of that shift was ‘The Acolyte,‘ Leslye Headland’s ambitious High Republic-era mystery series that ended its first and only season with several major cliffhangers still unresolved after airing on Disney+ back in 2024.
That cancellation came as a particular gut punch given how much groundwork the show had laid by its finale, revealing a major figure from ‘Star Wars’ lore and sending Amandla Stenberg’s Osha down a dark path as the apprentice to a mysterious Sith Lord played by Manny Jacinto. With those threads left dangling, fans have spent the time since wondering just how much story the creative team actually had planned before Disney pulled the plug.
Star Dafne Keen, who played Jedi Padawan Jecki Lon in the series, offered a glimpse into that unrealized future during a recent conversation with MovieWeb. “Season 2 was going to be incredible,” Keen said. “Like, I remember right now with Leslye Headland from the show, and she was telling me everything that she found, and it was so sick… It was going to be incredible.”
Keen didn’t go into specifics about what exactly Headland had shared with her, but her enthusiasm underscores just how developed the show’s plans reportedly were before cancellation. Disney chose not to renew ‘The Acolyte’ at a time when the studio was broadly scaling back its ‘Star Wars’ series output, with executive Alan Bergman previously stating that the first season simply didn’t draw a large enough audience to justify the cost of continuing.
Beyond the viewership concerns, ‘The Acolyte’ also became a lightning rod for online backlash throughout its run, with much of that criticism aimed specifically at cast members of color, including Stenberg. Keen addressed that dynamic directly in the same interview, noting how many people jumped on the wave of hate surrounding the show without actually knowing where the story was ultimately headed.
That unresolved ending has only made the show’s cancellation sting more for fans who stuck with it, since the finale left the door open for storylines involving the Jedi Order’s cover-up of past events and the deepening corruption within its ranks. Whatever Headland had mapped out for those threads will likely never make it to screen in its originally intended form.
Disney currently has far fewer live-action ‘Star Wars’ shows in active production than it once did, with ‘Ahsoka’ Season 2 standing as the only new series currently on the way, expected to premiere early next year. On the film side, ‘Star Wars: Starfighter,’ starring Ryan Gosling and set after the events of 2019’s ‘The Rise of Skywalker,’ is scheduled for release on May 28, 2027.
As for Keen herself, she has upcoming roles lined up in the films ‘The Marshmallow Experiment’ and ‘Night Comes,’ continuing her career beyond the galaxy far, far away even as ‘The Acolyte’ remains a passion project she clearly hasn’t fully let go of. With no signs of the show returning anytime soon, fans will likely have to settle for these secondhand glimpses into what could have been rather than a genuine continuation.
Did The Acolyte Deserve A Second Season?
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