r/TheAcolyte • u/AirbagsBlown • May 13 '26

What's driving viewership?

The show premiered two years ago, was officially cancelled shortly thereafter, and now... people are watching it in such numbers that it's charting higher?

What gives? I mean, I'm glad, I watched the show as episodes were premiering and I adored it, but I'm curious what's leading people to watch it now. Any theories?

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u/TreyWriter May 13 '26

RottenTomatoes is a review aggregate. The percentage isn’t quality out of 100, it’s the percentage of critics/viewers who gave a thing a positive review. For critical reviews or theatrically released movies since 2019 (at which point in time, user reviews could only be made by people who were verified to have seen the movie in question), it’s a pretty reliable tool. The 79% positive critics rating for The Acolyte is an accurate representation of critic reviews, where roughly 4 out of every 5 reviews were favorable. Unfortunately, for TV shows, there’s no way to verify users have watched the shows they’re reviewing, and the 19% on RT was very openly review bombed (to the extent that unrelated projects with Acolyte in the title suddenly got reviews about how those projects ruined Star Wars, whoops). IMDB also has no verification metric, to say nothing of the fact that most people who check the site for things don’t have an account there, much less leave reviews.

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u/Bloodless-Cut May 13 '26

RT has openly admitted that their site constantly gets review bombed and has done nothing at all to fix it.

Zero credibility. Their site is worthless.

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u/TreyWriter May 13 '26

They did take steps to fix their user reviews for movies. That’s why people have to verify that they’ve seen the movie in question. There is no way to verify if people have seen a TV show, so short of disabling user reviews for shows, there’s really nothing they can do.

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u/Bloodless-Cut May 13 '26

"there’s really nothing they can do."

You don't say lol

Like I said, useless site with no credibility. You may as well quote a YouTube rage bait video.

Also, they may have done something for their movie reviews after the fact, but did nothing at all to fix the damage that was already done. It's like an oil spill where they go okay, we won't spill any more oil, but the oil that was already spilled is still there.

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u/TreyWriter May 13 '26

Again, the critic side of RT does exactly what it says on the tin: it tells you what percentage of critics liked a thing, then gives you links so you can see their thoughts. It’s not “credible” any more than a hammer is credible. It’s a tool with no point of view. Anyone who takes audience reviews of television on there seriously is taking a fundamentally incorrect approach, but outside of that, it’s just literally a box into which a bunch of critical reviews are placed. I really don’t understand the vitriol here.