Star Wars: Rebels Scores Excellent Ratings for Disney XD
Star Wars: Rebels hit on all cylinders in Season 2 with impressive stories, great production values, and excellent voice acting. The franchise remains alive and well on the small screen, with Disney XD’s season two finale of Rebels surging to some of its best numbers in months.
This season continued to give us a look into the dark times that separated the prequels from the original trilogy. Fans got to see more of the origins of the Rebel Alliance and characters originally seen in Star Wars: The Clone Wars and the original trilogy, as well as revealing some interesting backstory to some of the technology and ships used in the original films. As if that wasn’t enough, all that is used as a backdrop to further develop the character and stories, giving fans nearly everything they could hope for from a Star Wars television show.
The hour-long season two finale of Rebels soared to success in the ratings, and Variety has got some stellar Nielsen numbers to share with us.
In Nielsen’s “live plus-7” estimates, the hourlong March 30 episode of “Star Wars Rebels” garnered 2016 highs in kids 6-11 (303,000/1.3 rating) and boys 6-11 (220,000/1.8 rating) and tied its highest-rated telecast of the year in kids 2-11 (1.0 rating) and boys 2-11 (1.4 rating). And in total viewers, its 1.2 million viewers is the largest audience for the show in more than a year.
On digital platforms, “Star Wars Rebels” generated 3.2 million viewers on the Disney XD app and amassed over 8.8 million VOD orders throughout its season.
Competitively, the “Star Wars Rebels” season two finale ranked as the No. 1 cable TV telecast in the hour among boys 6-14 (290,000/1.6 rating) and ranked a solid No. 2 in kids 6-11 and across target boy demographics.
For the season, roughly 22 million people watched at least six minutes of “Star Wars Rebels,” including 5.5 million kids 6-11, 3.2 million boys 6-11 and 7.6 million adults 18-49.
Star Wars: Rebels season 2 was packed with amazing, crowd-pleasing sequences and no-turning-back decisions, iconic moments and amazing confrontations. This may not come as too much of a surprise, but Disney XD’s hugely enjoyable animated series has been renewed for a third season. As things stand at the moment, we don’t know exactly what will go down in season 3, but Kanan, Ezra and the rest of the Ghost crew will return later this year with more adventures for the entire family.
We’ll be sure to bring you more news as we hear it.
May the Force be with you…
Anyone know if/when season 2 will stream free on the star wars site (or elsewhere)?
It’s rumored to be on May 4th. Like last year.
If you have Disney XD, you can stream the episodes for free on the app.
The ratings are half as good as TCWs. Which was a much better show.
Looking forward to more Rebels in the Fall – Bring it! Watch it w/ my 2 x young daughters every week it’s on!
Good. Then maybe Disney can increase its budget?
Hopefully. It looks like the animators blew all $2.00 of their Seasonal budget on the finale tbh.
Bet SW Celebration they’ll say Season 3 will have tie ins with Rogue One somehow
Considering who the writer for many episodes is, that is almost a guarantee.
No surprises it’s Star Wars! Now if only the show lived up to its potential and was actually good (aside from the occasionally one off).
I know it’s unlikely, but I hope the next animated series isn’t on Disney XD. This show is nowhere near the quality of The Clone Wars because they cannot tackle mature themes due to the target demographic.
Only a few episodes, like the last one, approach the clone wars in quality. To be fair, the clone wars went from good to great in season 3 and beyond in my opinion.
Agreed.
I can’t help but think of the emoticon everytime I see XD.
https://youtu.be/QGg8F7eDe7I