“Star Wars: Ahsoka” Finale Ratings Fall Short, But Show Is Still Worth Checking Out
Last week, Disney released the season finale of “Star Wars: Ahsoka” on Disney+ around the world. The series is set after the fall of the Empire, “Star Wars: Ahsoka” follows the former Jedi Knight Ahsoka Tano as she investigates an emerging threat to a vulnerable galaxy. The live-action series is a continuation of the animated series, “The Clone Wars” and “Rebels”.
According to Samba TV, the finale was watched by 863,000 US households over the first six days, which is compared to 1.2 million US households watching the season premiere in August.
It’s important to note, that this data only reflects US households, so the total number of views, including those international viewers, will be much larger. For example, Disney revealed earlier that the premiere episode actually had garnered 14 million views globally and that it was the number one globally on Disney+.
“Ahsoka”, much like every Star Wars release, has split audience opinion, with many people, including myself, enjoying the show, while there is also a large percentage of Star Wars fans who haven’t liked it. All of which is continuing to show the issues that the Star Wars brand is having with its audience. There can be many reasons why the viewership of “Ahsoka” are down, franchise fatigue is one issue that is often brought up, since in the past year, we’ve seen shows like “The Mandalorian”, “The Book Of Boba Fett”, “Andor”, “Obi-Wan Kenobi” and “The Bad Batch” released, often just months apart.
This is a major reason why Disney has decided to pull back on the amount of Star Wars shows it’s going to be creating in the future, returning a focus on theatrical releases, in the hope of rejuvenating the franchise, which is struggling to maintain the boost it obtained when “The Mandalorian” or “The Force Awakens” were released.
The season finale viewership numbers from Samba TV might seem low, especially when compared to the days of linear television shows pulling in millions regularly. By comparison to some other recent streaming releases, the premiere of the Netflix series, “The Lincoln Lawyer” pulled in a million US households, while the premiere of the Paramount+ series “Special Ops: Lioness” pulled in 1.3 million viewers and just 374,000 thousand households watched the premiere of the third season of “The Morning Show”. Even Netflix’s powerhouse shows like, “One Piece” only pulled in 739,000 US households for its premiere, and 1.3 million watched the season premiere of the fourth season of “Virgin River”.
While the ratings for “Ahsoka” are a disappointment, viewership across all of the streaming services in the US is much lower than many would assume, as people have more choices of what to watch and habits have changed. But with the cost of creating expensive shows like “Ahsoka”, we can see why Disney will now be cutting back on how many shows it creates.
If you haven’t checked out “Ahsoka” yet, you can watch the entire season of “Ahsoka on Disney+ now.
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