Amandla Stenberg's social media flooded with nasty comments following The Acolyte's cancellation
The Acolyte star received a wave of vile comments on Instagram in the wake of the show’s cancellation
Photo: Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images
Well, here’s something we knew would probably happen, but still really, really sucks. Last night, Disney announced that it was actually canceling a Star Wars series for the first time, leaving The Acolyte to be crushed to death in their proverbial garbage compactor. While we at The A.V. Club enjoyed the series, to say that, um, a specific group of people didn’t love it is a serious understatement. As The A.V. Club’s Matt Schimkowitz wrote, “Acolyte was always destined to be a lightning rod for controversy. Breaking the first few commandments of Star Wars, it focused on women and people of color, played with Jedi lore, had ‘space witches,’ and showed off Manny Jacinto’s abs.” All of that, paired with showrunner Lesly Headland’s quips that R2-D2 was a lesbian, earned the series the all-too-easy moniker Woke-alyte from a “specific kind of Star Wars fan that’s very vocal on the internet,” as its star, Amandla Stenberg, told GQ.
Now, those “fans” have turned their vitriol on Stenberg herself. A sweet post of hers about the show from three weeks ago has turned radioactive in the past 24 hours. While there is a sizable portion of fans attempting to comfort the actor and congratulating her on the show’s run, they are largely outnumbered by comments like “How does it feel to have your terrible show cancelled, princess???” and “Hate from Zimbabwe!” and just generally mocking the cancellation. Stenberg’s (male) co-star Manny Jacinto, however, has received almost nothing but love and support on his own version of the same post. Can you spot the difference?
These are just some of the comments under Amandla Stenberg’s latest Instagram post. Yet another black Star Wars actor getting harassed, and not a single word from Lucasfilm to denounce it.
Is this the audience you want to pander to? pic.twitter.com/q17Uvgu3r8
— Noah (@keldorjedii) August 20, 2024
This is, of course, far from the first time toxic segments of the Star Wars fandom have tried to bully women and non-white actors into hyperspace. They did it to The Last Jedi’s Kelly Marie Tran and they did it to John Boyega before her. This also won’t come as a surprise, but the issue isn’t remotely endemic to the galaxy far, far away. Last week, Kaitlyn Dever’s The Last Of Us co-star Isabela Merced revealed that the season two lead needed extra security while filming because “there are people that actually genuinely hate Abby (her character), who is not a real person.” At some point, we need to come up with a really juicy word for this specific type of asshole. They’ve gotten away with calling themselves “fans” for far too long; no actual fan of anything would ever be caught dead acting like this. If these weirdos are trying to “protect” their favorite properties for their sole consumption, maybe when ratings fall and cancellations mount, they’ll realize that they’ve been the baddies all along.
Lucasfilm did not immediately respond to The A.V. Club’s request for comment.