Merchandise based on The Acolyte has up and vanished from official Disney retail channels, under perhaps not-so-mysterious circumstances.
The Acolyte, the recent Star Wars series that was set decades before the franchise’s nine-film Skywalker Saga was canceled by Disney+ shortly after its season finale arrived. This act left fans markedly dissatisfied with a bad taste in their mouths.
The Acolyte Merchandise Gone From Disney Store
Following the sudden cancellation of Star Wars: The Acolyte on August 19, the official website of Disney Store has completely excised the show’s presence. This includes the delisting of all Acolyte-branded merchandise. In addition, the Acolyte section listed on the site’s sidebar was taken down.
Through the use of The Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, which enables users to view snapshots of webpages taken on certain dates, one can clearly see that there were, in fact, a few pieces of The Acolyte merch up for sale mere days earlier.
This included the below sweatshirt which featured the likenesses of several Jedi from the series:
Also for sale was a t-shirt printed with a graphic of Amandla Stenberg’s dual roles, Mae and Osha:
It’s important to note that The Acolyte is far from the only Star Wars Disney+ project to not have a strong showing on Disney Store. The Book of Boba Fett and Obi-Wan Kenobi have only a small amount of offerings, while the smash hit Andor has no listings whatsoever on the site.
It is also very much worth mentioning that Disney Store routinely removes the devoted landing pages for specific projects when they‘re no longer relevant, but the products that fall under their banners are often still accessible. However, with The Acolyte, all items associated with the series have been digitally purged.
UPDATE: The missing merchandise from The Acolyte has now been restored in the official Disney Store!
All 4 of The Acolyte shirts that were seemingly removed at some point in the past week are now available for purchase again.
Disney has not made a statement on why the merch was removed yet.
Why Was The Acolyte Canceled?
Despite being part of one of the most enduring and successful properties of all time, Star Wars: The Acolyte had a difficult time finding a foothold with audiences and was canceled due to low ratings.
The show did have quite a few fans, but many potential viewers were likely scared away from giving The Acolyte a try due to the vehement hate campaign and aggressive review bombing that the show faced throughout its one-season run.
Beyond that, large swaths of individuals simply seemed uninterested in the series, possibly due to the absence of any recognizable characters from the Galaxy Far, Far Away.
Sadly for devotees, despite leaving a lot of plot threads on the table for a potential Season 2, more of The Acolyte will likely never see the light of day.
Although the possibility always exists that Lucasfilm could continue the story in a novel or comic book series. It’s far from a perfect solution but it is likely the best one fans have at the moment.
Star Wars: The Acolyte is streaming in its entirety exclusively on Disney+.
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