You can’t wait two and a half years and then give us an aimless, nostalgia-baiting show and hope for improved ratings. The Mandalorian Season 3’s has opened to the series lowest Nielsen ratings yet as the show only turned 823M minutes viewed, leaving it well short of the billion or more views from past seasons.
How long did Disney really think they’d be able to pump out sub-par and frankly irrelevant Star Wars live-action content surrounding The Mandalorian before the flagship show would eventually take a hit too?
According to Nielsen ratings, The Mandalorian is on a fast track to being stale in the eyes of viewers as the show clocked in 5th in terms of total minutes viewed with 823M views during the week of February 27th-March 5th. Now, this may not seem too bad as that’s when the Season 3 premier took place, but the numbers get a little less rosy when you see what shows were more popular the week of the Season 3 premiere episode.
Netflix’s Outer Banks was the most viewed show during that time with 2.2B minutes viewed as its 3rd season dropped February 23rd, Netflix’s Murdaugh Murders: A Southern Scandal documentary was the second most viewed show with 1.08B minutes viewed as the Alex Murdaugh murder trial was gripping the US during that span, HBO’s The Last of Us was the 3rd most watched show with 1.01B minutes viewed after its historic success, and Netflix/Paramount’s NCIS was the 4th most watched series with 826M minutes watched.
Now, all of these are great shows/documentaries, but the flagship property of the Star Wars brand can’t even crack the Top-4 of most watched streaming shows during its Season 3 premiere week? That would have been unheard of only 10 years ago.
I mean, The Mandalorian lost out to a documentary about some murderous southern lawyer (Murdaugh Murders), a show that entered its 20th season has been running since 2003 (NCIS), a show that first premiered nearly a month prior (The Last of Us), and a show about degenerate teenagers searching for a hidden treasure (Outer Banks). Seriously, Disney?
I fear The Mandalorian’s slow decline into irrelevancy and cancellation has already begun as the show not only has been rudderless and nostalgia-baiting for nostalgia-baiting sake, but its importance and relevancy to the public also has been severely damaged from its connection to the other Star Wars live-action show that came out during the wait time between Season 1 and Season 2.
Obi-Wan Kenobi and The Book of Boba Fett’s placement in near identical timeframes as The Mandalorian’s own (aka: just after the Empire’s collapse) has diluted the uniqueness and freshness the opening two seasons of the series brought back when they first came out.
Remember, The Mandalorian was released a few weeks before The Rise of Skywalker, the final installment of the Sequel Trilogy, came out, thus naturally giving fans an escapism from the bleak, emotionless void Disney turned the Sequel Trilogy into. Obviously, I can’t base this in precise facts as I don’t have the streaming data for these shows (only Disney does), but I can guarantee the critical failures of both these shows hurt The Mandalorian.
(Disney/Lucasfilm-The Mandalorian-Redemption Trailer)
And, like I’ve said many times, The Mandalorian’s story ended last season, yet Mando and Baby Yoda are still being shoved onto our screens as they’re the only two new, fresh Star Wars characters Disney can realistically milk merchandise goods from.
Do you think little action figures, lunchboxes, blankets, etc. of Rey, Poe, and Finn are flying off the shelves? I doubt it.
I hate to say it, but I highly doubt The Mandalorian will see much of a rise in viewing figures once the rest of the numbers come out as around 57% of all those 823M minutes watched came from the season premiere. Or, in other words, less than 40% of The Mandalorian viewers were actually tuning into other seasons, unlike the other shows/documentaries on that list.
Images Source: Featured Image: (Disney/Lucasfilm) (Redemption | The Mandalorian | Disney+ – YouTube)
In Text Image 1: (Disney/Lucasfilm) (Redemption | The Mandalorian | Disney+ – YouTube)
