Obi-Wan Kenobi Finale Ratings Are Embarrassing: Star Wars’ Audience Is Gone

The audience has abandoned Star Wars. Ratings for Obi-Wan Kenobi are so bad that it is fair to wonder when the plug is going to be pulled.

Everything at Disney is on fire other than the parks which are buoyed by international guests this summer. Phase Four for the MCU movies is a canary in the coal mine situation. They’ve had flop after flop with only Shang-Chi arguably making any sort of profit. Who could have ever seen that coming, other than a few websites such as this one? Pixar can’t seem to produce a profitable theatrical release to save its life and Disney Animation Studios is following right along in their footsteps. The ratings we’re seeing for Disney+ shows indicates at least a slowdown in subscriber additions… but Netflix losses simultaneous to Stranger Things may indicate that Disney+ numbers could be following a similar slip when we get the data next time. But nothing… nothing… is collapsing harder than Star Wars and Lucasfilm. Up until today, we just didn’t know how bad it was.

Before getting into the numbers, I also want to say that there are some things adding up in my head. Disney has known these ratings long before we’re getting them. They have the real-time data which they hold very close to their vest. I knew something was up when they didn’t crow about the ratings with some sort of press release back when Kenobi had its finale. Remember that Stranger Things had zero new content that week, so this was a wide-open opportunity for Kenobi to blast its way it victory and huge viewership. Also remember that Disney allegedly has been using Kenobi as a way to grab bigger advertising rates for a future Disney+ ad-based model. All of that said… is it just coincidence that both Overlord DVD and That Park Place sources suddenly started leaking rumors about an end for Kathleen Kennedy, as well as frustration on the part of Jon Favreau, just days before these ratings came out? Something is up in my opinion. Kennedy and her husband may want to come back from their multi-month European bounce-around.

For context, here are the finale numbers for both Loki and WandaVision back from last year, at a time when Disney+ had far fewer subscribers:

Loki Season 1 was streamed a total of 1011 million minutes in its final week, according to Nielsen, a drop from 1.08 billion minutes season high in the previous week. Loki’s final week numbers slightly beat WandaVision’s final week numbers (924 Million minutes).

— Our friend, Scott Mendelson, Forbes

Okay, here are the streaming ratings for original shows during Obi-Wan Kenobi’s final week (Nielsen):

Pos, Platform, Title, Minutes Streamed in Millions

Alright, so what we’re looking at is that the “battle of the century,” the rematch between Darth Vader and Obi-Wan Kenobi following twenty years of hype and expectations, was essentially tripled by Stranger Things and Umbrella Academy. That’s not all. This supposedly massive event was beaten by WandaVision and Loki from a year prior when the audience was far smaller for the Disney+ platform.

This is truly, 100% cataclysmically bad for Disney. This is awful. There is no way to spin this whatsoever. Let me put this in perspective.

Let’s say that Disney came out with a theatrical release for Star Wars. Let’s say it was an Obi-Wan Kenobi movie. And let’s say that the movie made $86 million in its opening weekend while two other movies made more than $200 million in that same weekend, placing Kenobi in a very distant third spot. Would the headlines be blaring a major red-alert for everything Star Wars in that situation? You’d better believe it. And you’d better believe anyone with any sense in Hollywood is looking at these stats and saying “whoa.”

In early June, I discussed that Star Wars as a brand is dead in comparison to anything that it once was. That drew criticism, but it’s totally accurate. This is what dead looks like. If we pull in not just original streaming shows for our ratings list, but we also broaden this to movies, Obi-Wan Kenobi’s finale came in below a Netflix movie called “The Man from Toronto.” Let me say it again: Kenobi’s finale was beaten in the ratings by “The Man from Toronto.”

How many people are talking about “The Man from Toronto”? 

More than are talking about Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Let that settle in your brain for a minute.

When Lorn Conner had the following to say at the conclusion of Kenobi, he was striking gold with his wisdom:

Star Wars is Dead – So Now What?

For some time now, I’ve been holding out hope that a restoration of the glory days of Star Wars could occur. For much of that time, I’ve also said that the Obi-Wan Kenobi series would be the make-or-break point for Disney Star Wars. Now that the series has concluded, I don’t think that any other conclusion than the death of the franchise is possible.

Obi-Wan Kenobi may have only received a $90 million production budget, but it had everything and the kitchen sink literally thrown at it for marketing. There’s no telling how much money they spent. They did everything in their power. And this thing fell to year-old MCU series that were not themselves lighting the culture on fire, fell to two Netflix movies, and was walloped by an unbelievable margin by Stranger Things and The Umbrella Academy.

So you want to pretend Kathleen Kennedy is sticking around much longer? Think again. This is math now. The trades might not want to put it this way yet but this is as big a red alert as Disney is going to receive. This is worse than the Lightyear situation. At least it made $50 million at the box office in its opening weekend as a movie nobody really wanted or cared about. We’re talking about Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin rematching for the first time since the prequels!

So let the purge begin. It can start now or it can start later, but this is a business issue. This is math. There is no way that Disney is about to squander every bit of their lead in the industry for whatever is going on with politics and ideology at their studios.

For us, who cares what they’re going to do with The Acolyte? They can do whatever they want. Nobody is going to watch. They can’t meet last year’s Disney+ numbers for Obi-Wan Kenobi and you think Harvey Weinstein’s assistant is going to produce a Star Wars show that will suddenly draw ratings? That thing’s going to pull half of what Ms. Marvel is doing and we’re not even reviewing Ms. Marvel because the ratings are too low to justify it (we’re sorry to say that, we hear from people like Kamran Pasha it was made with love and care). So go ahead and act like a bunch of raging nuts with your Acolyte headlines for SDCC — the brand is dead when I suspect that sort of a show is going to pull ratings like “Love & Gelato” or “Chickenhare and the Hamster of Darkness.” Yes, those are real movies on Netflix, and yes, I believe The Acolyte will be competitive with their ratings.

We are no longer in that stage where we predicted what was coming for Star Wars in terms of everyone leaving. We’re there.

This is what dead looks like. Now we wait for Bob Chapek and the Board of Directors to pull the plug. One thing I can guarantee: they will not continue in this direction or they will lose major money every single time. And the way capitalism works is that there’s no way they’re going to do that on a regular basis knowingly. Let’s Batman v Superman this thing. The party is over. The lights are out. Star Wars is dead in all of its current trajectories. There’s no point in us covering it in the way we have been until something changes. The fans are gone.

Next week we’ll cover the finale for Stranger Things and its ratings. Then we’ll see what a success looks like.

For all the latest news that should be fun, keep reading That Park Place. As always, drop a comment down below and let us know your thoughts.