Daredevil: Born Again Season 2 was the most-streamed Disney+ original season in the U.S. for the first half of 2026, according to new Luminate data.
The numbers come from a Luminate post published Friday by media analyst Tyler Aquilina, and Daredevil is not even the subject. The post is an autopsy of the Wonder Man cancellation, and Daredevil only shows up as the bar Wonder Man fell short of.
The chart puts Season 2 at 2.3 billion minutes streamed from January through June, ahead of Wonder Man (1.9 billion), Percy Jackson and the Olympians Season 2 (1.8 billion), Daredevil: Born Again Season 1 (1.3 billion) and Star Wars: Maul – Shadow Lord (1.1 billion).
Before anyone at Marvel Television takes a victory lap, a reminder: this is the same show that went 0-for-17 on Nielsen across two full seasons. Not one episode of Daredevil: Born Again has ever made Nielsen’s weekly Top 10 originals chart.
Being the biggest Disney+ original of 2026 so far does not mean the show is big. It means the pile is small.
Note: Nielsen tracking is automatically turned on in Disney+ accounts, and it remains the go-to standard for viewership ratings.
What 2.3 Billion Minutes Really Means
Season 2 released eight episodes from March 24 through May 5, which works out to seven Nielsen reporting weeks.
The cutoff to make Nielsen’s originals Top 10 was 449 million minutes the week Daredevil premiered and just 334 million the week of the finale, one of the lowest bars the show faced all season. It never cleared it, not even in finale week.
Spread Luminate’s six-month total across those seven weeks and you get roughly 330 million minutes a week. That is right around the lowest cutoff Nielsen set all season.
The actual weekly number during the run was lower than that, because Luminate’s 2.3 billion also counts the eight weeks of viewing after the finale through the end of June.
Luminate and Nielsen measure differently, so treat that as a gut check rather than an audit. But the two firms do not disagree about this show.
Luminate’s own weekly Top 10 originals chart, which runs in Variety, had not listed Daredevil through the end of April either.
And back in April, Luminate’s numbers showed Season 2 running about 55 percent behind Season 1 at the same point in their runs, 652 million minutes against 1.44 billion.
So the most-streamed Disney+ original of 2026 so far is a season that lost roughly half of its predecessor’s audience, by the count of the same company now handing it the crown.
Here is the line that should sting: Season 1, with zero new episodes this year, pulled 1.3 billion minutes in the first half of 2026 as a catalog title. Season 2, with eight new episodes and a full marketing push, did 2.3 billion.
It also only tops the chart by minutes, the metric that rewards a season with eight episodes that run up to an hour. By Luminate’s estimated season views, the top Disney+ original of the half was The Punisher: One Last Kill, a single special, at 12.2 million, and that one missed Nielsen in its debut week too.
Look At What It Is Beating
Wonder Man sits second at 1.9 billion minutes. Disney canceled Wonder Man last month after one season and took back a Season 2 order it had already announced.
A report said the viewership did not justify the costs, and star Yahya Abdul-Mateen II has since confirmed he was told it came down to the numbers.
Luminate’s own read is that Wonder Man was “on the bubble”: 52 percent of the viewers who started the season finished it, one point under the 53 percent Luminate says a new Disney+ series needs to be safe from cancellation.
Wonder Man at least charted once on Nielsen: 618 million minutes in its opening week in January, good for No. 8, before vanishing the following week for good.
The No. 2 show on this chart got canceled over viewership. The No. 1 show never posted a single week as big as the canceled show’s one good week.
Percy Jackson and the Olympians Season 2 is third at 1.8 billion, and its finale failed to chart on Nielsen after a season that bled viewers week over week. It only trails Daredevil here because its season started in December 2025 and this chart counts January through June only.
The rest of the Top 10 is three seasons of The Mandalorian that are three to seven years old, Percy Jackson Season 1 from 2023, and Phineas and Ferb.
Luminate’s series-level tally makes the same point. The Mandalorian pulled 2.4 billion minutes for the half with zero new episodes, third on all of Disney+, on catch-up viewing around a movie Disney has since admitted flopped.
When half of a “2026 originals” chart is library viewing, that is the catalog problem Luminate itself flagged in its Q1 report: Disney+ runs on its old shelf while new Marvel originals barely move the platform.
The Rest Of Streaming Is Playing A Different Game
Nielsen’s mid-year report lists the biggest streaming originals of the first half of 2026: Stranger Things at 23.2 billion minutes, The Pitt at 21.1 billion, Landman at 12.4 billion, The Boys at 9.6 billion, Fallout at 8.0 billion.
Hulu’s Paradise and Netflix’s One Piece sit 14th and 15th at 5.7 billion apiece.
Disney+ does not have a single original in that Top 20. Its best show over the same six months, at 2.3 billion minutes, would need to more than double just to reach 15th place.
That gap is not a methodology quirk. Same country, same six months. It is the difference between a streaming hit and a Marvel show Disney+ subscribers watch because it is there.
What It Means For Season 3 And Beyond
Marvel is pressing ahead with Daredevil: Born Again Season 3 regardless, and the plan is a full Defenders reunion with Luke Cage, Iron Fist and Elektra back in the mix.
Born Again was also carved out as an exception when Marvel started cutting back on live-action Disney+ shows, with the ratings as the reason.
Those cutback reports now have competition. Per Puck’s Julia Alexander, multiple live-action Marvel series are in development for Disney+, with announcements expected soon, one week after Marvel announced zero new series at D23.
Expect “most-streamed Disney+ original of 2026” to show up in that pitch. It is true. It is also the streaming equivalent of being the best player on a team that went winless.
Whatever Marvel announces next will be measured the same way the first 17 episodes of Daredevil: Born Again were, and Nielsen will not care who topped a Disney+ chart.
