Well, my understanding was that the Acolyte was meant to be like the culmination of the High Republic event, which introduced this pre-Phantom Menace period when the Republic and Jedi Order were at the height of their powers. High Republic started as a publishing event with the goal of other media spinoffs and such.
Since Disney bought Star Wars, their goal always seemed to be to make their own stuff and not simply remake the old pre-Disney EU material.
And frankly, the canonization of the old EU material was never that strong in the first place. Even Lucas himself ignored it when he saw fit. I like those old EU stories and characters, but Lucas never seemed to care much about it when he was creating the prequels or Clone Wars. Filoni would use some of that content, but he always put his own spin on it.
Just because it is set towards the end of the High Republic era in the timeline, it doesn't mean it is the culmination of Project Luminous, aka The High Republic publishing project. Even with one character from that showing up, it really has no connection to Project Luminous. Though, considering that Luminous authors are doing prequels to the Acolyte, I am fine with them also putting out whatever Headland's plan was.
Eclipse still needs to be cancelled though. **** David Cage touching this era.
And yet Ahsoka got a second season, and Rosario Dawson isn't exactly a white woman. Perhaps it has less to do with race and more with audiences showing up for Ahsoka and not for The Acolyte. Plus, Ahsoka admittedly had more of a draw than this show did. At the end of the day, numbers matter, and viewership falling off for The Acolyte would be a prime reason for Disney to dump the series.
Ahsoka is also Filoni's baby, who just recently got a promotion. Never underestimate personal bias in play when certain shows get renewed or cancelled. [stares hard at Netflix]
They need someone calling the shots who actually knows television. With Andor being perhaps the lone exception, every live-action Star Wars series has felt like an assembly cut of a movie hacked into 6-8 parts. Pacing's a mess, editing's nonexistent. And that's not even getting into the material itself.
On top of that, they've not been able to nail down a story worth telling on the big-screen in over five years. It's STAR WARS and they can't figure out what to do with it.
I mean, all the streamers have had the same issue. Gotta chase that prestige hit. And strongly disagree with your assessment of the Star Wars shows. Mando season 1 was perfectly episodic, which people complained about "filler". And Season 2 is a good season of television. Season 3 got screwed over when half of it was put into Book of Boba Fett.
Yes, its Star Wars. But, Star Wars has largely existed as books, comics, toys, video games for most of its 40 year history. Hell, cartoons have been bigger than live action shows for a lot of its history as well. One could maybe argue that, Star Wars may not be best as a live action show.
Frankly, needs to get over this 8 episode limit, let shows tell the story they need for as long as it needs, and work out a viable budget.