The Nielsen Streaming Charts For Ahsoka - Week 7 (Finale)

The final episode of Ahsoka has been added to the Nielsen streaming charts! How did the episode perform? The Ahsoka finale also competed with the first episode of Loki season 2 – which franchise had the upper hand? Star Wars or Marvel? And how does the Ahsoka finale compare to all the other major season finals we’ve had on Disney+ thus far? Click through for all the details!

Shin shows Captain Marvel who’s the boss on Peridea

First the basic numbers: Ahsoka had 576 million viewing minutes. That’s good enough for #2 on the original series charts and #11 overall.

This week I  will not compare episode 8 of each series, Obi-Wan Kenobi had no episode 8, Andor’s finale was episode 12 (and in week 7 it did not make the top 10), I think it’s better to compare finale numbers for all the Star Wars shows! And I also added all the Marvel shows to see how the competition is doing. So how does Ahsoka stack up in the grand scheme of things?

Click to enlarge!

Please click on the bar chart so you can see the details!

What we see is a huge surprise. The Andor finale outperformed the Ahsoka finale! And Ahsoka, overall, is the least watched Star Wars season finale on Disney+ (just barely so however), and third least watched season finale in total, but beating Secret Invasion and Ms Marvel.

One reason why Andor may have outperformed Ahsoka is that more people may have binge watched Andor as the finale approached, meaning more people may have watched previous episodes that week, which does add to the viewing minutes. You have to remember that the Nielsen numbers are for the entire series and all the episodes combined. Now the most recent episode will always have the lion’s share of the viewing minutes, but how many minutes exactly is unknown. Also, Andor was shown on regular tv a week prior to the finale and that may have given a small boost to new subscribers maybe. We can’t say, but I would not be surprised if the actual viewership for just the finale would still find Ahsoka (barely) beating Andor.

Still, it may come as a huge surprise that Andor overtook Ahsoka on the finish line, throughout the season however Ahsoka had substantially better numbers than Andor, something like 12 vs 8 million.

One more thing is noteworthy: compared to the previous week Ahsoka lost about 1 million views. The finale is not the episode with the best ratings. Episode 7 had the best numbers. I would have expexted the finale to have the best numbers of the entire season. But just like The Book of Boba Fett and Obi-Wan Kenobi the finale is not the most watched episode.

The Mandalorian season 3 finale vastly outperformed Ahsoka, Ahsoka does not even get half the viewership. And what I said in the previous weeks can only be reiterated: I do not think Ahsoka’s numbers justify greenlighting any big Mandoverse movie, not given the fact that Ahsoka is the kickstarting event for the movie. Many, many people will not have watched Ahsoka and a substantial number of people may not even have watched The Mandalorian, so any big Mandoverse movie may have limited appeal or confuse more casual moviegoers who are not subscribed to Disney+ but do see Star Wars movies in theaters.

All in all Ahsoka delivered an ok performance, roughly 12 million people on average is not “bad” to make that very clear. But it’s certainly not great either when Ahsoka is outperformed consistently by all other Star Wars shows other than Andor, and Andor still beating Ahsoka with the finale.

That puts Ahsoka firmly in “average” territory, even slightly below average if we consider all the other Star Wars and Marvel shows on Disney+.

But how did Ahsoka fare against Loki? You have to remember that Loki season 1 was by far the most popular Marvel series on Disney+. You can also see it on the bar chart, Loki’s finale outperformed everything else by Marvel. And also everything Star Wars, other than The Mandalorian.

So how did the first season 2 episode do? To put it bluntly, I would label the numbers a disaster for Marvel, Kevin Feige and Disney.

The season 1 opener back in June 2021 had 14.05 million views. Almost 2 1/2 years later, with millions of more subscribers in North America, Loki’s season 2 opener has 9.48 million views or 446 million viewing minutes vs 731 million minutes back in 2021. That hurts.

That is a decline of 33% compared to 2021. And things get even worse if you consider the finale numbers, more than 22 million views, this is a decline of almost 60% compared to that. Meaning the majority of people who watched the Loki finale did not return. Now in all fairness it is quite likely that Loki’s season 1 finale numbers were also seriously boosted by binge watchers. And it may very well be that Loki’s numbers will be better once the finale is released, with people deciding to watch it all over the weekend, instead of one episode each week.

Still, the 9.48 million is bad news. Marvel is in really bad shape. Some people love to claim that Star Wars is dead, but Star Wars is alive and kicking compared to Marvel now. The other 2023 Marvel series, Secret Invasion, was a complete dud as well, Ahsoka handily outperformed Secret Invasion throughout the season. You can see on the chart how Secret Invasion only manages to beat Ms Marvel with its finale, Secret Invasion’s numbers throughout the season were very lackluster and disappointing.

One reason for the disappointing numbers may be general Marvel fatigue, maybe even superhero fatigue, since DC and Warner also had a disastrous year with several epic flops (and Aquaman 2 is still coming and it will probably be a flop too). Another reason may be that simply too much time passes between seasons on Disney+, you ask people to return to a series where the season finale was aired almost 2 1/2 years ago. Then again, people DID return for The Mandalorian season 3, at least the 1st episode outperformed even the season 2 opener.

And even worse, the big The Marvels movie will be an epic flop next week, so epic it may even perform worse than the Ed Norton The Hulk movie, which, thus far, was the least successful proper MCU movie all the way back in 2008. The box office forecasts are pretty accurate these days and Box Office Pro’s forecast for The Marvels is downright abysmal and it keeps trending downwards, the projections have been lowered even in recent updates. It may have an opening weekend in the 45-62 million USD range. The lower end and even middle region of the forecast puts it straight at the bottom of all MCU movies, ever, unadjusted for inflation even. Domestic total could be as low as 109 million USD. For a movie that cost north of 250 million to make. You have to add marketing of about 100 million. That movie needs at least $650-700 million to just break even. And worldwide total may be even lower than $250 million.

And to add insult to injury Variety reported director Nia DaCosta (yet another smalltime indie director with zero experience making 200+ million CGI heavy blockbusters, her only movie of note is the 2021 Candyman remake/sequel co-written by Jordan Peele which did horribly at the box office and has lousy reviews) didn’t even bother to stick around for post production after lengthy 4-week reshoots… she preferred to start working on her next smalltime indie movie and in interviews she put some shade on Marvel and Kevin Feige, calling The Marvels “his” movie. In fact, she only confirms what has been said before: modern franchise movies, Marvel, Star Wars etc are no longer director driven movies, as they always used to be, these movie franchises work more like tv shows where the showrunner (head writer) / producer calls all the shots and directors are just hired hands with little creative input.

When even Loki, one of the most popular MCU characters and one of the few remaining original avengers characters, disappoints on Disney+ it’s reason to be very concerned at Marvel and Disney.

And concerning Disney: The Marvels will be yet another epic flop this year for them. And the year is not over yet. Disney’s animated movie “Wish” is ALSO projected to be a massive flop with an opening weekend that is even worse than The Marvels’, in the 40-60 million range, but Box Office Pro projects a better hold for the movie (superhero movies usually have very little staying power at the box office and are very frontloaded) so the movie may outperform The Marvels overall, but not by all that much. But it’s still very much in flop territory. That movie has a reported budget of $200 million, add marketing. Also, Wish will suffer internationally from the same problems as The Little Mermaid, which only had a foreign box office share of not even 48% (Aladdin had almost 67% and this is one reason that movie had almost twice the box office of The Little Mermaid), because Wish has the exact same formula as The Little Mermaid, black “Disney princess” with white prince love interest in a European fairytale setting. International markets will almost certainly not be as much in love with the movie as Disney needs it. Asia will almost certainly completely ignore the movie, just like they did with The Little Mermaid.

So where does that leave us? Ahsoka was not the huge hit Disney maybe wanted or needed it to be. But neither was it a disaster as some may want you to believe, the series was a consistent top 10 show, had about 12 million views each week (in North America), this is absolutely solid and I would say it’s even good. Certainly a lot better than any of the Marvel shows in 2023 thus far. But it may not be enough to justify a movie. When more than half of the potential Star Wars audience on Disney+ decided to never even give Ahsoka a chance. The Mandalorian, with a pretty rough third season, still managed to gain more than double the views just a few months prior.

And Marvel is heading straight for the iceberg. This would seriously damage Disney, since that means Marvel is even more damaged than Star Wars. Because while Star Wars has no new movies it also means those movies can’t lose any money… and the shows are some of the most popular content on Disney+, with The Mandalorian outperforming even everything and being the #1 show for Disney, even with season 3. Whereas Marvel lost substantial amounts of money with Quantumania and now The Marvels, only Guardians of the Galaxy 3 may have made a little money (not much, given the highly inflated production costs). And for Disney it’s just a dismal 2023 at the box office. Indy 5 will still be the biggest flop this year for them by far… but The Marvels may not be far behind.

And with Loki now seriously struggling on Disney+ – and remember, Disney+ added several million subscribers since 2021, which makes the lower numbers even much worse – it would mean that the two major Disney tentpole franchises are in stormy waters. And their live action remake machine is also coughing up lots of smoke these days. And should Wish flop, as projected, their once heralded animation department would have released yet another flop, after the Strange World disaster from 2022.

And Marvel is actually in much more dire shape than Star Wars. It is actually amazing to observe how quickly Marvel completely derailed after Endgame. Now of course there is a very good chance Star Wars may join the club if that Rey movie ever materializes and is not just yet another pipe dream (the movie could also be a success of course, you never know). Apparently Steven Knight has resumed work on the movie after the strike ended. He needs all the luck in the world.

What else… Disney has yet another #1 movie on streaming, this time Haunted Mansion, but with substantially worse numbers than The Little Mermaid or Elemental had in their first week, chances are extremely high this movie will drop out of the top 10 in two weeks from now. Haunted Mansion also was a veritable box office flop. Other than that Netflix still rules the streaming world, the usual.

And that is it with the Nielsen charts, depending on future appeareances by Ahsoka I may give a brief update, but chances are Ahsoka will drop out of the top 10 next week. Nielsen articles will return when or if a Star Wars series enters the charts. Skeleton Crew with Jude Law shepherding a bunch of teens who are all lost in space should be released next. Maybe. You never know anymore these days.

The Nielsen Streaming Charts
Box Office Pro (their forecasts are pretty accurate, they also accurately predicted Indiana Jones’ box office, it was actually the lowest end of their predictions)

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