"Put a chick in it and make it lame and gay," said South Park's Eric Cartman dressed as Disney/Lucasfilm head Kathleen Kennedy. 

While Matt Stone and Trey Parker were satirizing the direction Kennedy was taking the Star Wars brand, Kennedy wasn't joking. She really was going to put more women in it, and as a recent interview with "Star Wars: The Acolyte" showrunner Leslye Headland proved, she's making Star Wars is gayer than ever. 

In an interview with The Wrap, Headland and lead actress Amandla Stenberg were only too happy to celebrate the new LGBT direction Star Wars has taken, with Stenberg saying that "nerds are gay" and Headland claiming that R2-D2 is canonically a lesbian. All the while, Headland continued a Kamala-like cackle. 

We are happy to report that #TheAcolyte is “arguably the gayest #StarWars” yet. 🌈 Happy Pride Month! 😉 pic.twitter.com/3oJSykc4Kq

— TheWrap (@TheWrap) June 4, 2024

By the way, R2 is a droid. 

Rest assured, the show is fulfilling the "lame" part of South Park's joke as well. According to Rotten Tomatoes, "The Acolyte" has a 94 percent fresh rating, which is expected, but it's the audience who are being far more truthful about the show's quality, sitting at 46 percent. The show's Metacritic score isn't much better, with a user score of only 3.2. 

(Related: Gina Carano and South Park Are Giving Disney Their Wake Up Call About Kathleen Kennedy)

Even Rolling Stone didn't seem to like the show, which is something I'm sure many didn't expect: 

"Even a veteran Jedi master would lose patience with the latest Disney+ addition to the canon, which focuses on a pair of twins, revenge, and... zzzzz," wrote Rolling Stone's Alan Sepinwall. 

The show has received a negative a response on X with fans pointing out various things that come across as ridiculous, such as an ongoing fire in the black of space, something that the writers didn't think would look remotely silly. 

A fire
In space#Acolyte pic.twitter.com/P73j9aGRJF

— Nerdrotic (@Nerdrotics) June 5, 2024

As I wrote on Monday, Star Wars is suffering heavily from a complete lack of care for both the story and the fandom in favor of introducing personal politics and self-inserts from producers and showrunners. The decline in quality has been noticed by both fans and Disney's bean counters, which have noticed a sharp decline in box office bucks and Disney+ viewers. 

(READ: Star Wars Was Better When the Force Wasn't Female)

The Star Wars you knew and love has now been replaced with intersectional messaging and just plain bad writing. While "The Acolyte" definitely suffers from the former, the latter is what truly stops it from becoming anything remotely watchable. The show tries to tease you with something of a murder mystery, which could have been a unique prospect for the Star Wars universe, and with Jedi acting as the detectives. 

But this is all quickly cast aside, and you get the typical shallow Disney-esque approach of horribly shot action sequences that do nothing to advance the plot. It feels infantile, which I think accurately describes the entirety of Lucasfilm's approach to storytelling right now. 

Want a compelling, well-told story in a unique universe set in a far-flung galaxy in the distant past? Best we can do is badly shot wire combat, mid CGI, and LGBT references. 

If this is now the galaxy far, far away...it can stay out there.