Marvel Animation’s X-Men ’97 continues to struggle to make an impact on Nielsen’s streaming viewership charts, with the Disney+ series now failing to crack the Top 10 Originals rankings for a second consecutive week.
The latest Nielsen Streaming Content Ratings cover the week of July 6 through July 12, 2026, and X-Men ’97 is once again nowhere to be found among the 10 most-watched original streaming programs in the United States.
That is particularly notable because the second tracking period gave viewers substantially more X-Men ’97 Season 2 content to watch.
Disney+ launched the season with a three-episode premiere on July 1. A fourth episode then arrived on July 8, meaning four episodes of Season 2 were available during Nielsen’s second tracking week, with the first three available for the entire seven-day period and Episode 4 available for five days. Not to mention the previous 10 episodes from the first season.
And it still wasn’t enough.
X-Men ’97 Falls Below 385 Million Minutes
The No. 10 program on Nielsen’s Originals chart for July 6 through July 12 was Apple TV’s Silo, which accumulated 385 million minutes viewed across its 22 available episodes.
That means X-Men ’97 generated fewer than 385 million minutes of viewing during the week for all four episodes combined. Nielsen’s measurement covers Disney+ and ranks streaming programs by total minutes viewed by people ages two and older.
Nielsen Ratings for Streaming Originals on July 6-12 2026 – Nielsen
For some perspective, Love Island USA dominated the Originals chart with 1.997 billion minutes, followed by Netflix’s Little House on the Prairie with 926 million minutes and Worst Neighbor Ever with 820 million.
Even repeats of Nickelodeon’s Avatar: The Last Airbender managed to effectively wipe the floor with X-Men 97.
Even if we unrealistically assumed every minute watched belonged exclusively to the four available Season 2 episodes, the 385 million-minute ceiling would work out to fewer than 96.25 million minutes per episode on average.
The actual average attributable to those episodes could be even lower.
That is because Nielsen measures viewing for the entire program, not merely the newly released episodes. Season 1 remains available on Disney+, meaning any viewers going back and watching or rewatching those 10 previous episodes would also contribute to the show’s total viewing minutes.
In other words, X-Men ’97 couldn’t reach 385 million minutes even with 14 total episodes available on the service.
Two Nielsen Weeks, Two No-Shows
This follows the show’s failure to chart during its premiere week.
As Cosmic Book News previously reported, the first three episodes debuted on July 1 but failed to appear on Nielsen’s Originals chart for June 29 through July 5 despite having five days to accumulate viewing time.
The No. 10 program that week, Netflix’s Ms. Rachel, generated 331 million minutes, placing an upper limit on what X-Men ’97 could have accumulated during its premiere.
Gambit in X-Men 97 Season 2 – Disney+
Now the series has been given another complete Nielsen tracking period and another episode, and the result remains the same.
It is important to note that the higher 385 million-minute cutoff during Week 2 doesn’t necessarily mean X-Men ’97 actually lost viewers week-to-week. Nielsen only publicly reveals its Top 10, so we do not know exactly how many minutes the series generated.
What we do know is that it failed to reach the threshold in either week.
The Problem Is Becoming Difficult to Ignore
This is also not a new problem for X-Men ’97.
Season 1 repeatedly failed to appear on Nielsen’s streaming charts, including during the week its season finale was released. Even all ten episodes combined failed to surpass the Originals chart’s 219 million-minute cutoff for that week.
That makes Season 2’s performance especially noteworthy. Marvel had a critically acclaimed first season, more than two years to build anticipation for its return, and launched the follow-up with three episodes at once.
(L-R): Bishop (voiced by Isaac Robinson-Smith), Cyclops (voiced by Ray Chase), Magneto (voiced by Matthew Waterson), and Morph (voiced by JP Karliak) in Marvel Animation’s X-MEN ’97. Photo courtesy of Marvel Animation. © 2024 MARVEL.
Yet after two weeks, Nielsen still shows no evidence of the series breaking through to a larger streaming audience.
That doesn’t mean Disney is abandoning the franchise. Quite the opposite. Marvel Television and Animation chief Brad Winderbaum confirmed at San Diego Comic-Con that both Seasons 3 and 4 of X-Men ’97 are already in development.
But if Nielsen’s numbers continue looking like this, Marvel may eventually have to confront an uncomfortable question: How much of the online conversation surrounding X-Men ’97 is translating into people actually sitting down and watching the show?
Two weeks into Season 2, Nielsen still isn’t providing much evidence that it is.
Are you surprised at the low viewership for X-Men 97 Season 2? Sound off and let us know!
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