‘Ahsoka’ Part One Collected 14 Million Views on Disney Plus
Disney Plus has announced via a press release that the new Star Wars series, Ahsoka, drew 14 million views for its first episode this past week, making it the most streamed title on the platform. While not immediately clear from the press release, Deadline says the number is for global views, not just in the US.
Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy said in a statement:
“Ahsoka has become a fan favorite with people of all ages and it’s wonderful to see her continue to resonate with viewers in her very own headlining series. I want to recognize the fantastic work done by our creative team, led by Dave Filoni and Jon Favreau, the incredible cast led by Rosario Dawson, and our talented crew — and on behalf of the team and all of Lucasfilm, we give our thanks to all the fans who have been with Ahsoka on every step of her journey and to all those who are just learning about her now in Ahsoka on Disney+.”
The announcement comes just a few hours after Samba TV reported that they had measured Ahsoka having a 25% decline in viewership from The Mandalorian season 3 in North America, using a small sample of 3M households. The timing of the announcement is also particularly interesting, being in the middle of the negotiations between the writers and the Hollywood studios, with one of the main fighting points being the lack of data transparency in streaming. But it also carries a lot of questions, the first being: What does this even mean?
According to Disney Plus, a view equals the time that the episode was streamed by a user divided by the total runtime — meaning that if you watched half an episode, it would count as 0.5 views, but if you watched it three times, it counts as three views. But context is everything here — how did The Mandalorian perform back in March? How did Andor? Disney Plus announced last year that Obi-Wan Kenobi was their biggest premiere ever, and since this language did not appear in Ahsoka‘s announcement, we assume it didn’t perform as well (assuming no other show has surpassed the Ewan McGregor-led series since then).
The number comes in a vacuum, and the fact that Disney Plus is celebrating in the announcement that this was the biggest show of the week on the platform is not exactly encouraging. Did they expect anything else? Not mentioning how this compares to previous Star Wars shows is also suspicious and makes us think that it’s not in their best interest to do so. This is obviously a classic PR move, where they want a big number on social media headlines, and not giving proper context allows those headlines not to be dismissive of the series, and thus generate positive buzz about it.
The worst-case scenario here is that they were hoping for more people to show up, and they want to lure in audiences however they can. That being said, though, this is a tactic they have never used — the closest they’ve come is revealing that Black Widow made $60M for them on Disney Plus back in the summer of 2021 when it was simultaneously available in theaters and on Disney Plus for an extra $30. And it’s not like all of their shows have hit the mark they were hoping for (see: Marvel’s Secret Invasion).
When asked to expand by Star Wars News Net, the streamer declined to offer any additional context regarding how Ahsoka’s premiere compares to previous Star Wars or overall Disney Plus series.
It’s obvious they don’t want to disclose the number for previous shows, which tells us they probably won’t be doing it again for The Acolyte or Andor season 2; the fact that they didn’t announce the viewership number for Part Two also tells us not to expect a similar report next week. But one can certainly hope this will set a precedent for them. For additional context, as of Disney’s last quarterly report, Disney Plus had 157.8 million subscribers globally.
The announcement was made mere hours before Part Three is set to debut on the platform. Check back on Wednesday morning for our discussion on the new episode!
Miguel Fernández is a Spanish student that has movies as his second passion in life. His favorite movie of all time is The Lord of the Rings, but he is also a huge Star Wars fan. However, fantasy movies are not his only cup of tea, as movies from Scorsese, Fincher, Kubrick or Hitchcock have been an obsession for him since he started to understand the language of filmmaking. He is that guy who will watch a black and white movie, just because it is in black and white.
