The Nielsen ratings have now been released for the premiere of Marvel’s Agatha series, and they fall short of the ratings for The Acolyte, which has been canceled after one season. Agatha also looks to have the lowest ratings of the weekly released MCU shows.
Agatha premiered with the first two episodes on September 18. The series sees the return of Kathryn Hahn from WandaVision and follows the infamous Agatha Harkness finding herself down and out of power after a suspicious goth Teen helps break her free from a distorted spell. Her interest is piqued when he begs her to take him on the legendary Witches’ Road, a magical gauntlet of trials that, if survived, rewards a witch with what they’re missing. Together, Agatha and this mysterious Teen pull together a desperate coven, and set off down, down, down The Road.
What are the Agatha Nielsen ratings?
The Nielsen ratings reveal that for the week of Sep. 16 – Sep. 22, 2024, the first two episodes of Agatha were watched for 426 minutes (millions).
For a comparison, the first two episodes of The Acolyte were watched for 488 minutes (millions).
While Agatha is at the low end of the Disney+ shows, at least Agatha cost a lot less than The Acolyte. It’s known Agatha is Marvel’s cheapest show to date, reportedly around $40 million, while The Acolyte cost well over $200 million.
What about Agatha vs the other Marvel shows on Disney+?
If we compare Agatha to the other shows on Disney+, Agatha looks to have either the second or third lowest ratings, beating Echo and possibly She-Hulk (another show that reportedly cost $200M).
Marvel released all the Echo episodes at once, but if we take the average per episode, Echo only comes out to 146.2; Agatha‘s two episodes average out to 213.
She-Hulk? The first episode didn’t make the Nielsen ratings, but the week episode two was released saw 390 million minutes, and then week three saw 472 million minutes. We can guess fans only watched the one episode released that week, which is better than Agatha.
Ms. Marvel also beats Agatha with a 249 Nielsen rating for its first episode.
Agatha watched less than WandaVision
What about WandaVision? It seems Agatha was watched less than WandaVision which had its first two episodes watched for 434 million minutes (update: we corrected the stat accounting for WandaVision also having a two-episode premiere). However, week three was watched for 376 million minutes and week four for 431 million minutes. The reason WandaVision seems so low at first is because episodes were released at the end of the week that Nielsen measured (a 3-day span; WandaVision premiered Jan. 15, 2021, Nielsen measured the week ending January 17, 2021) while Agatha was released closer to the start of the week Nielsen measured (5-day span; Agatha premiered Sept. 18, Nielsen measured to Sept. 22). So it does seem as if Agatha did lose half the viewership of WandaVision.
Secret Invasion? 461 million minutes for the week Episode 1 was released.
Hawkeye: The first two episodes were released in one week which saw 853 million viewers.
Moon Knight: 418 million minutes for the week episode 1 was released.
Loki Season 1’s first episode? 731 million minutes.
Loki Season 2: 446 minutes.
The Falcon and the Winter Soldier: 628 million minutes.
At least another plus for Agatha is that the head of Marvel TV said Agatha has the best watchable return rate of any Marvel show, meaning the least amount of drop off per episode, so those bottom of the barrel MCU fans watching the show apparently like it or are simply watching anything because it’s “Marvel.”
On Rotten Tomatoes, critics and fans are in line with respective scores of 82% and 81%, not all that good for the superhero genre.
We’ve also launched our own fan review site, StinkyGarbage, where Agatha is presently considered “Garbage.”
