Skeleton Crew Ratings Spell Doom for Star Wars
The twin suns of Tatooine appear to be setting on Star Wars. There have been signs for a while that the sci-fi behemoth was losing its grip on the cultural landscape (and, by extension, Disney was losing its grip on the money they invested in it), like each successive movie doing less business, merchandise failing to sell, and Galaxy’s Edge at the Disney theme parks crashing and burning. But the wall is increasingly filling with writing, like a truck stop bathroom stall, only not as classy. According to Cosmic News, Skeleton Crew, the new Star Wars series on Disney+, is doing even worse than the previous Lucasfilm disaster, The Acolyte. The Nielsen Ratings released their top ten numbers from the week Skeleton Crew premiered, and it didn’t make the list despite premiering with its first two episodes. A Star Wars show lost to The Great British Baking Show, which is number 10 with 382 minutes viewed.
How bad is that? Cosmic Book News crunched the numbers: The Acolyte’s premiere (when it was at its peak viewership), which was also two episodes, garnered 488 million minutes viewed, more than The Great British Baking Show did during Skeleton Crew’s premiere. That means viewership is declining from what was considered rock bottom for the Star Wars franchise, and this is for a show the few people who watch it seem to think isn’t all that bad. Virginia is enjoying it, and the Critical Drinker said it’s decent enough. There could be several reasons for this, like Skeleton Crew looking like a kids’ show, which isn’t going to draw in a lot of the older fans and is coming at a time when parents are losing their trust in Disney producing appropriate children’s programming. (Gee, I wonder why.) But the biggest factor is almost certainly how bad these shows have been, with The Acolyte probably being the last straw. And that’s following a movie series that humiliated and killed Luke Skywalker and Han Solo, introduced a bunch of new characters that didn’t hit, and invalidated virtually everything that happened in the one universally beloved section of Star Wars: the original trilogy. It’s like a bad relationship – resentment builds over time until one spectacular blowout, and you realize you have to call it quits.
That’s what happened with Star Wars. The hits just kept on coming, and now, people are done. You can only give something so many chances before you let it go and accept that, at best, it’s not for you, or at worst, it just plain sucks. Star Wars took a while because it was a decades-old established franchise that so many people loved and that shaped entire childhoods. The desire to give Disney and Lucasfilm every possible chance to get it right was unusually strong. Look how much more quickly Marvel was rejected; many – myself included – loved the MCU, but it hadn’t been around as long as Star Wars, so it was easier to let go and admit that it was no longer the franchise we fell in love with. (One week in Cancún, and suddenly, Thor’s a girl, and Nick Fury is chasing cats on a spaceship.) But Star Wars is past the point of no return, and Lucasfilm didn’t help itself by attacking Star Wars fans every time they didn’t like something. You get tired of giving someone the benefit of the doubt really fast if they call you a racist for thinking a lesbian witch chant feels a little out of place in a Star Wars show. Good luck with those Rey movies you’ve got in the pipeline, guys.
Let us know what you think of Skeleton Crew’s ratings and Star Wars’ downward spiral in the comments!
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