In the weeks following
The Mandalorian Season 3’s premiere, Parrot Analytics Director of Strategy Julia Alexander began sounding a warning alarm in Matthew Belloni’s Puck newsletter.
She wrote: “Disney is the king of franchises, but there’s no doubt that disinterest is kicking in. Sure, others would kill for a Star Wars or a Marvel, audience decay be damned. But the numbers for
The Mandalorian don’t look good.”
While she admitted that exact figures wouldn’t be released by Nielsen for a few weeks yet, Alexander did assert that “the third season is the least in-demand
Mandalorian season, averaging half the demand (66x the average demand of all series in the U.S.) of the first season (125x), according to Parrot Analytics data. That’s additionally validated by SambaTV, which finds a significant drop in viewership compared to the second season.”
When the official Nielsen data dropped last Thursday, it turned out that
The Mandalorian Season 3 Episode 1 “The Apostate” was the fifth most-watched streaming show of the week, behind Netflix’s juggernaut hit
Outer Banks, Netflix’s latest true crime docuseries
Murdaugh Murders: A Southern Scandal, HBO Max’s
The Last of Us, and the syndicated CBS show
NCIS (streaming on both Netflix and Paramount+).
The good news is
The Mandalorian is still the biggest Star Wars show on Disney+. The bad news is it seems more people are streaming
NCIS than Baby Yoda’s latest adventure.
So how did
The Mandalorian, once a bulletproof, monoculture-consuming hit, slip so far between seasons two and three?