Lo and behold, after a few weeks of absence, The Acolyte‘s final episode did manage to enter the Nielsen Originals streaming charts. However, Lucasfilm is not satisfied with these numbers. In fact, the numbers are pretty bad. Click to see all the details!
The eighth and final episode of “Acolyte” successfully entered the top 10 original program streaming charts, ranking 10th, with a broadcast time of only 335 million minutes. The finale is almost 47 minutes long (with credits), which gives you an idea of how bad those numbers are.
To put things in context, here’s my updated chart with the finale viewership numbers for all the Marvel and Star Wars shows for which we have data. There is no Echo in this chart. All episodes of Echo were dumped on the same day, the ratings were a disaster and the show stayed on the charts for a week. There’s no doubt that Echo is the least-watched Marvel/Star Wars series on Disney+. Its only saving grace is that it was cheaply made, costing $40 million.
But where is The Acolyte located? How does it compare?
Here is the updated chart, now including Acolytes!
The acolyte ended up dead. As mentioned above, Echo had lower ratings, but this series can’t compare because the show didn’t have the ratings of its finale, and all the episodes were released on the same day because Marvel and Disney decided to wrap this up as quickly and easily as possible everything.
But now this. Even “Ms. Marvel,” which before “Acolyte” was the least-watched “regular” series with a weekly release schedule, beat out “Acolyte.”
Anyone still under any illusions about The Following getting a second season should take a closer look at this chart. A $180+ million budget is not bad for last place. This is 58% of Ahsoka’s ratings and 27.5% of The Mandalorian’s Season 3 finale. As a result, three-quarters of potential viewers decided not to watch the series finale of The Following. In short: Lucasfilm lost 75% of its potential audience with this show. The final episode has some of the best numbers in The Acolyte. Episodes 4-7 have even worse numbers. Too bad they never even made the charts.
The fact that Ms. Marvel has yet to receive a season 2 order should give fans of The Following a hint.
To put it into perspective: The Following was watched for 335 million minutes. The Boys Team has 1.329 billion and the Dragons have 1.107 billion. “The Mandalorian” S2 finale (Luke’s episode) has 1.336 billion minutes, The Mandalorian S3 still has 1.012 billion minutes, even Andor has 674 million minutes, even more than Ahsoka, later It’s the least-watched Star Wars series finale on Disney+ to date.
I hope we never have to talk about Acolytes again.
Nielsen Streaming Chart