Interest might just be waning in The Mandalorian and Baby Yoda as it is learned the Season 3 premiere didn’t hold up well for Disney Plus.
The episode also happens to be the lowest-rated on Rotten Tomatoes and IMDb which features those goofy space Pirates and the Pirate King, and Episode 2 wasn’t much better as not much is going on and it’s just more of the same featuring more goofy-looking creatures.
Update: Nielsen ratings reveal a big drop.
The Book of Boba Fett again beats The Mandalorian
Viewership data has been released by Samba TV who has access to over 25 million connected TVs and per The Wrap, The Mandalorian again gets beat out by The Book of Boba Fett, which save for those two Luke Skywalker episodes, is a terrible series.
The data reveals that The Book of Boba Fett season premiere beat out The Mandalorian Season 3 premiere by 2%, so, according to data previously released by Samba TV, as The Book Of Boba Fett was watched by 1.7 million households, The Mandalorian Season 3 came just shy of that number.
Update: Samba TV revealed the above graphic that shows the episode was watched by 1.6 million households, a million less than Boba Fett, around a 6% difference.
The Book of Boba Fett season finale released last year in February also happened to crush The Mandalorian‘s Season 2 finale by 36%, with 1.5 million households to 1.1 million.
Obi-Wan beats The Mandalorian
It’s also learned The Mandalorian Season 3 premiere fell short of the Obi-Wan Kenobi series by a whopping 28%, another not-so-good series from Lucasfilm, and fell short of Marvel’s Loki by 35%.
We also get some numbers for Andor as it is reported The Mandalorian Season 3 premiere was watched by 50% more households than Andor, so that means Andor was watched by only 850k households, which is a shame because Andor is a really good series (stick with it!) as it’s on the more serious side and isn’t goofy at all. Season 2 is in the works.
And keep your helmet on, Pedro!
Recently has seen Disney CEO Bob Iger offer Disney is going to take a careful look at Star Wars and Marvel, with Wall Street execs previously stating they are skeptical of both brands’ abilities to do anything for Disney Plus.
“Star Wars, we made three what we called saga films, which is obviously the successors to George Lucas’ first six. They did very well at the box office — tremendously well as a matter of fact,” said Iger. “We’ve made two so-called stand-alones in Rogue One and Solo. Rogue One did quite well, Solo was a little disappointing to us. It gave us pause just to think maybe the cadence was a little too aggressive. And so we decided to pull back a bit. We still are developing Star Wars films. We’re going to make sure that when we make one, that it’s the right one, so we are being very careful there.”
Worth a mention is that Iger said the reason for the pullback at Star Wars (and Marvel) is because of too much quantity, but that’s not the case at all, as the real problem is the quality (of writing and leadership), and the fatigue that is settling in with the fans is crappy output.
What is particularly worrisome for both Star Wars and Marvel is that if the shows lose viewers or fail to do anything for Disney Plus (i.e. increase subscribers), Disney might cut back on things that would further hurt the shows. There is probably an argument that can be made that cuts are already happening as again The Mandalorian Season 3 premiere wasn’t any good and the space pirates looked terrible, and the Marvel shows aren’t much better with the awful CGI in She-Hulk and terrible writing in Ms. Marvel, Hawkeye, etc. where only Loki has been given a Season 2.
