Marvel’s Wonder Man is now available on Disney+ AND Hulu, but with an important catch.
Hulu’s official X account posted: “This is Simon. He wants to be a star. But he has a secret. #WonderMan is now streaming for a limited time.”
It’s a notable shift for a Marvel Disney+ series, especially after the show’s Nielsen performance cratered almost immediately.
The Nielsen recap: one week on the chart, then gone
Marvel dropped all 8 episodes of Wonder Man at once, which should have helped it build big weekly totals.
In its first week on the Nielsen charts, Wonder Man pulled 618 million minutes watched with all 8 episodes available.
That works out to 77.25 million minutes per episode.
The next week, Wonder Man disappeared from the Top 10 entirely. Nielsen’s #10 slot for that week came in at 332 million minutes, meaning Wonder Man fell under the cutoff.
With all 8 episodes still available, that implies Wonder Man came in under 332 million minutes total for the week, which averages under 41.5 million minutes per episode.
Marvel already tried the free sample move on YouTube
After the weak Nielsen result made the rounds, Marvel put Episode 1 on YouTube for free and directed viewers to Disney+ to watch the rest.
As of press time, the Wonder Man Episode 1 upload has 141k views.
A Marvel YouTube video posted two days earlier about X-Men ’97 and Cyclops has 354k views.
Fear of missing out on Wonder Man?
Making Wonder Man available on Hulu, even “for a limited time,” reads like another attempt to widen the funnel after Disney+ couldn’t keep it on the charts.
If Wonder Man couldn’t hold the Nielsen Top 10 for more than a single week with a full-season drop, Marvel clearly needs more eyeballs from somewhere, and Hulu has a built-in audience that doesn’t always overlap with Disney+ viewers.
We also see Disney and Marvel are trying to create “FOMO” by stating Wonder Man will only be available for a “limited time.”
