Season 1 of The Acolyte has been strange. The production values are great, the performances excellent, the action freakin' awesome. But now that the finale has aired, the response is pretty negative across the board because it doesn't really add up. In other words, we don't really know what's actually going on in this series. We watched a bunch of stuff happen, and it was cool to see, but it's impossible to know what any of it means because we don't have enough information.

This article is free of any spoilers for Star Wars: The Acolyte. But you can read a spoiler-filled discussion of The Acolyte season finale here if you'd like to read more.

In that sense, The Acolyte is a show that requires a second season, or else it'll end up as an utterly pointless and massively expensive streaming paperweight. Whether it "deserves" another season based on ratings or quality is a separate discussion and not really relevant. What's at issue here is Disney's and the Star Wars brand's relationship with its fans--there's no trust there whatsoever, and for good reason. But it is possible to fix it. Disney just desperately needs to demonstrate some follow-through, something it hasn't shown much of within Star Wars or Marvel in recent years.