If you ask any regular consumer of television what they think about Star Wars: The Acolyte, they’re likely to give you a normal answer. They might list things they like and things they don’t, for example, that they enjoyed the setting of the show, or that they thought the practical effects looked a little janky. These are normal, valid criticisms to have of a show that you’re watching.

Ask a Star Wars fan on Twitter, though, and you might end up on the receiving end of a spiel about how The Acolyte is woke, and therefore, bad. Not all Star Wars fans!, I hear you cry. Don’t worry – if you’re normal, I’m not talking about you. I saw one particular tweet from the Managing Editor of conservative Christian satire website The Babylon Bee, which I’m not going to link here because I refuse to give them free clout. The tweet called the show a “queer, Marxist vandalisation of the myth of Star Wars” where the Force is a “metaphor for cultural hegemonic power”, and the Jedi are “cisgender white oppressors”.

The Acolyte Is Not Woke

This is a ridiculous thing to say, obviously, and the original poster was not saying this in good faith. Neither were the blue ticks in the replies who largely agreed, saying that this isn’t really Star Wars, George Lucas is rolling in his grave (despite the fact he’s still alive), and how the show is liberal propaganda. Scroll a little further down and you’ll find the regular, non-engagement baiting replies from people saying that the tweet actually makes the show sound great and that they can’t wait to watch it.

Here’s some important context: only two episodes have been released so far. There has been a brief mention of Osha having two mothers, and that Jodie Turner-Smith is confirmed to be playing a lesbian witch in future episodes, but there isn’t actually any indication that the show itself touches on explicitly queer themes – so far, there are just characters that happen to also be queer. None of the reviews of the first four episodes of the show have said that queerness is a central theme, and alas, a couple of queer characters does not a queer show make.

The show’s lead Amandla Stenberg and creator Leslye Headland did call it “the gayest Star Wars yet” in an interview with The Wrap, which was clearly in jest – they alluded to the franchise’s fashion being queer-coded and called droids C-3PO and R2-D2 queer, laughing the whole time. Apart from this obvious joke, there has been no indication that the show itself actually tackles queer themes, and really, the gayest thing about it right now is that the showrunner is a lesbian and Amandla Stenberg, its lead, is non-binary and queer.

Marxist? Come on, we’re talking about Disney here, one of the biggest capitalist corporations in the world. And there’s no reason to believe the Jedi are “cisgender white oppressors” – two of our main Jedi aren’t even white. Where is this argument coming from?

If You Don’t Want To See The Acolyte, Pluck Out Your Eyes

Or just, you know, don’t stream it. Star Wars fans often make it a personality trait to make it clear, over and over again, that they haven’t enjoyed anything in the Star Wars franchise in decades and nitpick absolutely every detail. While I agree that Disney’s Star Wars is often sanitised and worse off for its straight-to-streaming nature, I am able to simply not watch things that don’t appeal to me instead of complaining about gay people being in my shows.

If you think The Acolyte is bad, by all means, vote with your wallets and cancel your Disney+ subscriptions – your money is, after all, the only thing that matters to Disney. But try to be normal about it. It’s a show about space monks – I don’t think it’s that deep.