Star Wars has remained a dominant pop culture phenomenon for so long because fans are willing to dive into even the most obscure bits of lore and production history. That proved to be a double-bladed lightsaber recently, however, when a fan on Reddit managed to calculate how the canceled series The Acolyte’s numbers stack up to other Star Wars shows on Disney+. The chart u/JarJarJargon made is not official, but it seems to line up with recent reports and reveals a startling truth: The Acolyte cost a staggering $671,000 per minute to make, and the numbers suggest that it was watched 1.5 billion minutes less than Ahsoka.

The Devil’s In The Details

This chart (which, we need to emphasize, is fan-made) reveals more of The Acolyte’s numbers which seem to explain why the show was canceled. For example, the cost of $671,000 per minute is even more scandalous because the next most expensive show was Andor, which cost $530,000 per minute. That cost seems retroactively justified by Andor being adored by fans and critics alike, earning a season 2 renewal; comparatively, Acolyte spent far more money per minute to deliver something that divided the fandom and got prematurely canceled.

Consider The Viewership Ratio

Aside from the sticker shock of the cost per minute, The Acolyte’s numbers are embarrassing in some other ways as well. For example, it has a similar number of views (9.3 million) per episode as Andor (9.9 million), but the overall minutes watched tell a different story. In this case, Andor had 4.622 billion total minutes watched compared to The Acolyte’s 2.4 billion total minutes watched, and the fact that Andor had four more episodes can only account for so much of that huge difference.

A Justified Cancellation If The Numbers Track

Assuming that all of the information in this Reddit chart is accurate (and, as mentioned before, it seems to line up with other industry reporting), one thing becomes abundantly clear: Disney was right to cancel this controversial new show. The endless culture war among fans managed to obscure whether this new show was really bad, or as The Acolyte’s biggest fans loved to claim, that the complaints mostly came from a small number (a “vocal minority,” as they like to say) of haters.

A Data-Driven Decision

However, this show looks bad compared to almost everything else: it has the highest cost per minute, lowest number of views per episode, and lowest number of total minutes watched compared to The Mandalorian, Andor, Ahsoka, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and even The Book of Boba Fett. As we recently wrote about, Disney doesn’t care about culture war nonsense and would have renewed The Acolyte for a second season if enough fans were regularly tuning in. These numbers reveal that cancelling the show was nothing more than a pragmatic decision by a company whose quality of programming has been steadily getting worse.

Disney Taking Their Lumps And Moving On

Aside from The Acolyte, the other numbers also reveal a sobering truth: every other Star Wars show on Disney+ pales in comparison to The Mandalorian. It’s no surprise, then, that this show is getting its own spinoff feature film, one that might even be good enough to make us forget about The Rise of Skywalker. But unless the House of Mouse finds a way to emulate The Mandalorian’s success with its other spinoffs, then Star Wars might die altogether, and unlike Palpatine, it might never return.