The Mandalorian remains Disney's most popular Star Wars show

Disney kicked off the TV era of Star Wars in 2019 when it aired the first season of The Mandalorian. Despite featuring the adorable Baby Yoda at its center, Disney chose not to merchandise the show until after it was already a hit, which may have gone some ways towards creating a mystique around it. The show has been such a hit that Disney is even making a movie, The Mandalorian and Grogu.

Despite five other live-action Star Wars TV shows released since then, The Mandalorian is still at the top of the pile, according to an analysis of viewership data from Spotlight, which says that the third season was watched for nearly 6.5 billion minutes within its first 12 weeks of availability. That's ahead of The Book of Boba Fett (which was basically The Mandalorian season 2.5), which had just over 6 billion minutes watched. Next up is Obi-Wan Kenobi, which picked up just over 5 billion minutes. Andor pulled in around 4.5 billion minutes, and the first season of Ahsoka slightly less than that.

Currently, Disney is airing The Acolyte, a new show that has received a lot of backlash from fans, both for legitimate reasons about it being dull and poorly paced as well as silly reasons about how "woke" it is to cast women of color in lead roles. The show hasn't been out long enough to meaningfully compare it to those other shows we mentioned, although Spotlight notes that viewership has dropped off since the series premiere, which received 2.94 million viewers in its first two days. That's below something like Ahsoka, which had 3.26 million viewers for its premiere. Interest seems to be flagging over time.

Are the Disney Star Wars shows losing steam? Why?

Screenrant thinks this is partly due to viewers engaging with Star Wars as a brand, rather than engaging with any of the particular shows on offer. And Disney seems to enable this with crossovers between Ahsoka, The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett. The company seems to want viewers to understand these shows as threads in a bigger quilt.

I more or less agree with this take. I don't think enough of the shows that have come out since The Mandalorian have distinguished themselves enough to be enjoyed on their own, with the exception of Star Wars: Andor, which has found a passionate fanbase of people eagerly looking forward to the next season, even if it wasn't the most successful Star Wars show Disney has yet produced.

I could be surprised, but I expect we're in for more of this mediocrity when Skeleton Crew, a youth-focused Star Wars show about a group of youngters who must find a way to pilot a spaceship back home, comes out later this year. But after that, I wonder if Disney will correct course. There seems to be acknowledgement from the top that producing too many mid-tier shows dilutes the quality of the brand. If I was in charge, I think I would have greenlit The Mandalorian and Andor and let them do their things for several seasons until they came to natural ends, and only then considered other ideas.

The season finale of The Acolyte airs tomorrow night on Disney+. We have yet to hear if it will get a second season.

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