We have further confirmation that X-Men ’97 is looking like a massive flop as now it’s learned Echo has done better in the ratings, and by the looks of it by a large margin.
In Variety‘s article titled “2024 Streaming Hits Point Way to Post-Peak TV IP Strategy,” the report reveals the “2024 Share of Disney+ Original Series Viewership.”
Five episodes of Echo top nine episodes of X-Men ’97
According to the data from Luminate Streaming Viewership that Variety uses as the source, Echo, with five episodes released, has 11.8% of the 2024 Disney+ viewership.
X-Men ’97 with nine episodes released as of May 10? Only 6.8%, and it’s pretty much on par with Star Wars: The Bad Batch which has three seasons, and comes in with 6.3%.
Similar to X-Men ’97, Star Wars: The Bad Batch hasn’t made the Nielsen Ratings charts this year.
Worth a mention is that the five episodes of Echo have a runtime of around 201 minutes, while the X-Men ’97 nine episodes is around 270 minutes, yet X-Men ’97 is watched by nearly half. That’s huge.
We actually already knew Echo performed better than X-Men ’97
We actually already knew Echo performed better than X-Men ’97 thanks to the Nielsen ratings, as Echo did appear on the Nielsen ratings charts while X-Men ’97 has not.
It’s also worth saying that Echo is terrible while fans love X-Men ’97.
However, it should be pointed out that Marvel dropped all five episodes of Echo at one time while X-Men ’97 dropped two episodes in one day and the rest as weekly single episodes.
The X-Men ’97 two episode premiere was not watched by enough people to make either the Nielsen ratings or the Disney-invested Samba TV charts.
It should also be said when the average minutes viewed is taken into account, Echo is the least-watched MCU show on Disney+, less than Ms. Marvel, the least-watched weekly MCU show on Disney+, so what’s that say about the X-Men ’97 numbers?
It can be pointed out that Echo was released in January, so it has a jump on X-Men ’97 in terms of the watchable amount of time; however, following the five-episode release, Echo disappeared from the Nielsen charts.
So I doubt anyone new is really watching the show or rewatching the series (again, it’s horrible), something which The Bad Batch numbers seem to support, as again, Bad Batch has three seasons out but no one is watching the older episodes and the numbers are low.
Disney brand is damaged — beyond repair?
As I’ve said on more than one occasion, what I think is happening is that the Disney brand is so damaged, fans aren’t watching anything (did they show up for The Marvels?).
Sure, X-Men ’97 might be a good show, but most fans are sick of Disney ruining their favorite content (Marvel, Star Wars, now Doctor Who).
While you can argue X-Men ’97 is animated and not live-action which is attributing to the ratings, yeah, I can agree with that, however, 23 million people watched the original series, and X-Men ’97 is now performing worse than the What If…? animated series.
