Star Wars fans worried The Acolyte will be pulled from Disney+ after merchandise is yanked from Disney store

Days after Disney+ announced the cancellation of The Acolyte, Disney has made a drastic move that is turning the heads of Star Wars fans and creating a bit of panic.

In a surprise move, it appears that Disney has removed all merchandise connected to the show from the Disney Store online with searches for The Acolyte turning up a “No Result Found” message on the store. Even searches for show merchandise in Google which direct fans to the Disney Store’s online shop are giving visitors 404 errors that greet visitors with a message that reads, “Oops, Page Not Found!” 

Typically, after a show’s cancellation or enough time has passed between the release of a less-than-successful release, Disney will discount the merchandise in its online shop and even in storefronts as we’ve seen with titles such as Wish. With The Acolyte, though, Disney has removed the merchandise connected to the show entirely from the site which is creating a lot of understandable panic among Star Wars fans. 

The biggest fear among fans is that the removal of the show’s merchandise from the Disney Store is a sign that the show could soon be removed from Disney+ altogether. And that fear is justifiable. 

It’s not out of the question that The Acolyte could be removed from Disney+

Just a few short years ago, it would seem unimaginable that a streaming service would pull an original series from its catalog; however, recent years have seen mass purges of content from streaming services including original series released exclusively on their respective streamer. 

Last year,  Disney removed dozens of original programs from both Disney+ and Hulu. Among the shows Disney+ has removed from its service was Lucasfilm's original series Willow which was removed from Disney+ just months after the show was canceled due to low viewership. The removal of Willow and the dozens of other original series including The World According To Jeff Goldblum and Y: The Last Man was a cost-cutting measure that saw underperforming programs removed much to the dismay of the fans and teams behind the shows. 

While studios haven’t been pulling quite as many shows in recent months as they were there for a stretch of time when the hits just seemed to keep coming, it’s not out of the question that more series could be removed in the future and it's entirely possible that The Acolyte could join that list. 

Seeing that Disney yanked the show’s merchandise from its online store just days after the show’s cancellation, it’s not out of the question that Disney might choose to eventually pull the show from Disney+. 

Given that the show was only just canceled in late August, we don’t anticipate that Disney will remove the show in the immediate future, but given that Willow was removed just months after it debuted and was subsequently canceled there we can’t rule out the possibility that the show could be pulled from Disney+ by the end of the calendar year. 

Nothing is guaranteed in these days of streaming, so we recommend binge-watching The Acolyte while you can as there’s truly no telling how long the show might be on Disney+ or if will be removed.