As subscribers grow, one would expect the most popular show on Disney+ to also grow. That does not seem to be the case — far from it.
Away from the eyes of most entertainment journalists and casual observers, The Walt Disney Company is falling apart. Most can be forgiven for not noticing. The news, after all, usually covers things after they happen, not before. And there are thousands of big companies in the world — surely not everyone can be focused on a single entertainment corporation and its spiral. But it’s worth noting and may be a warning sign to other entertainment companies the world over.
We’ve watched Disney hand over its animation crown to Universal, we’ve seen Phase Four and Phase Five of the MCU have financial failure after financial failure. We’ve even seen Star Wars suffer from longer “fatigue” than anyone really anticipated. There hasn’t been a Star Wars theatrical release since the sequel trilogy and it doesn’t seem there is one in sight. Now, the show that put Disney+ on the map may also be collapsing in terms of interest. While I won’t venture a guess here why that is, just know it represents a seismic shift throughout the industry in understanding the market of normies is plugged in and paying attention to cultural decisions by corporations now.
The big stat that should be catching your eye is that The Mandalorian Season 3 is looking to have debuted to an audience roughly half the size of Season 2. That parallels what we’ve seen with Black Panther 1 versus Black Panther 2. It parallels what we’ve seen with Antman 2 versus Antman 3. Across a number of Disney major releases, it appears that half the audience has disappeared.
How do we know this? Well, using Samba TV’s latest intra-comparison using their own data measurements for various show, then matching that up with the more reliable Nielsen for comparable, we arrive at a place where we now expect that when Nielsen shows The Mandalorian’s Season Three start, it will be roughly around 50% of the second season.
The Mandalorian Season 3 premiere had a relatively weak performance in comparison to some of the other Star Wars Disney+ series.
Although its viewership exceeded the recent Andor by close to 50%, it still trailed behind Obi-Wan Kenobi and The Book of Boba Fett premieres by 28% and 2%, respectively, while also falling short of Marvel Studios’ Loki premiere by 35%.
As shared by Samba TV, the first episode of Ewan McGregor’s Jedi spin-off was viewed by 2.14 million US households in the first four days. Meanwhile, the debuts of The Mandalorian Season 2 and The Book of Boba Fett were watched by 2.08 million and 1.5 million households, respectively.
— Sam Hargrave, The Direct
For a Disney Company looking to drive subscriptions higher on lower budgets, losing a stalwart such as The Mandalorian is one of the biggest punches in the gut we’ve seen so far. Perhaps it can rebound. It’s going to really need to or the impact on Disney+ could be significant.
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