Assistant Priest It wasn't perfect, but it created a new narrative ground. Star Warsa franchise often filled with Force ghosts and endless recurring characters. Led by Leslye Headland, the Disney+ series dared to re-evaluate decades-old clichés, expose the flaws of the Jedi Order, and play with the space sandbox setting in new, interesting ways. But Assistant PriestStarring Amandla Stenberg as twin sisters trying to find balance in the Force and Manny Jacinto as the super-sexy villain, officially cancelled.
There won't be a second season on Disney+ and right now the worst-behaved cast members of the series Star Wars fandom celebrates its downfall. But Assistant PriestWhile the cancellation adds fuel to the ongoing culture war, it's also indicative of a much larger problem afflicting modern television, and streaming services and rising production costs are to blame.
The flaws of modern TV
The rise of a diverse (and expensive) collection of streaming services, replacing basic cable subscriptions for millions of paying customers, has fundamentally changed the landscape of modern television. In the golden age of cable TV, there was much less time between seasons of a typical show than there is now. Check it out Breaking Badis widely considered one of the most prestigious television shows: The final episode of its first season aired in March 2008, while the first episode of its second season began airing almost exactly a year later. Now, there is routinely more than one year between seasons – two years ago Dragon House Season 2 followed the previous one, with about three years passing between seasons 2 and 3 Mandalorianand the series finale Stranger Things there is still no release window (the last season aired two years ago and production on the next season began this year).
That’s a huge amount of time for an invested audience to wait, and it can greatly reduce their enthusiasm for a series; it can also cause them to literally lose track of the plot, as it’s hard to remember what happened in the previous season when it’s been a few years since you last watched it. It’s also hard to justify a second season when you know it’s been years in the making; there’s no real reason to let a series breathe any longer, to iron out the rough edges of the first season. Parks and Recreation If it had been canceled after season one, we would never have gotten it. One of the funniest scenes in modern television..
Then there are the costs of producing prestige television, which have skyrocketed in recent years. Amazon Prime's Fall out The series reportedly cost $153 million for a single season. At the end of its run, game of Thrones The series, which started at around $6 million per episode and spawned a spin-off just a few years later, cost around $15 million per episode. Dragon House cost “less than $20 million” per episodeWith construction costs so high, companies want to get a return on their investment and do not accept the answer of “it's just the first season, let's wait for it to mature.”
Accordingly Forbesguess place Assistant PriestThe production cost for just eight episodes was around $180 million and viewership was around half of the series. Ahsoka and 75% less MandalorianAs companies become increasingly concerned about the numbers, it becomes impossible to justify airing another season of a series that is so expensive to produce and whose viewership numbers don’t match the rest of the series in the franchise. And therein lies our final problem: the series.
The Star Wars problem
The only “successful” deviation from tradition in recent years Star Wars has become media AndorA 2016 spin-off spy thriller series starring Diego Luna Thief One. Although it reportedly doesn't have as big an audience as this one, Mandalorian or Obi Wan Kenobi, AndorThe second season of It is scheduled to be released sometime in 2025. Andor Technically, like so many other things, it's retreading old ground Star Wars The series feels incredibly fresh compared to other series that rely heavily on nostalgia to appease old fans, so it’s a pleasant surprise that Disney has decided to fund another season—especially since there are no plans for a second season for either The Book of Boba Fett or Obi Wan Kenobi.
However Andor is the exception, not the norm. A certain group of fans are highly resistant to perceived changes in tradition or the centering of marginalized people. Star Wars media and Assistant Priest it irked them from the start: directed by a woman, with a black non-binary lead, lesbian witches, and a scathing look at the flaws of the Jedi, it became the focus of a culture war before it even released. Stenberg and Jacinto spoke about racist reactions Assistant Priest faced opposition from the former, even releasing a song referencing the hate directed at them. At the time of writing, Stenberg’s latest Instagram post was filled with comments disparaging them: “Never take the L Star Wars “Again?” one comment reads, while another asks, “How does it feel to have your terrible show cancelled, princess?”
Unfortunately, in an age where modern television series are defined by big price tags and (hopefully) bigger audience numbers, Assistant Priest It was an almost insurmountable feat to ensure his survival. If his mere existence had not been used as a catalyst for talk of “wokeness” Star Warsperhaps it could have had a fighting chance. But when a modern TV series takes on a long-running franchise and dares providing a different kind of fan serviceThe sad truth is that this will be a reminder of how far a fanbase still has to go.