The first five episodes of Skeleton Crew on Disney+ have failed to make the Nielsen ratings charts—a first for Star Wars.
And once again, Disney+ automatically enables Nielsen tracking in user accounts.
With only eight episodes in total, Skeleton Crew is looking increasingly unlikely to appear on the Nielsen charts at all.
What are the ratings?
Nielsen has released its charts for the week of December 30, 2024 – January 5, 2025, covering the period when Skeleton Crew Episode 5 debuted on December 24.
At the bottom of the list, ranked #10, is Beast Games with 398 million minutes viewed. Since Skeleton Crew failed to make the chart, its viewership was below that threshold.
Nielsen measures viewership for all episodes within a given week’s timeframe, so the hope that fans would binge-watch Skeleton Crew seems to be fading.
The best chance now is that viewers waited until the full series was released to binge-watch. However, with no noticeable jump in viewership after five episodes, it appears that no new audience is coming on board.
Comparison to The Acolyte
For comparison, The Acolyte—which looks to have put the final nail in Star Wars‘ coffin—also failed to chart with its fifth episode. In fact, only the two-episode premiere, the third episode, and the finale made the Nielsen charts.
The final episode of The Acolyte only reached 335 million minutes viewed, meaning it wouldn’t have made the Nielsen charts if it had premiered the same week as Skeleton Crew Episode 5.
Additionally, a recent report confirmed that Star Wars underperformed on Disney+ last year.
Fans no longer care about Star Wars
Skeleton Crew isn’t a bad show by any means—it’s actually better than most Star Wars series on Disney+. However, fans haven’t tuned in. Instead, they’ve tuned out of Star Wars altogether.
The blame falls on Kathleen Kennedy, Lucasfilm, and Disney for failing to deliver a quality product.
Same is happening with Marvel https://t.co/lvbbT9l0ux
— Cosmic Book News (@cosmicbooknews) January 30, 2025