It’s curious that, even in a year when we’re not drowning in MCU content as much as usual, the project that kicked off Marvel’s 2024 still came and went without too much staying power. Deadpool & Wolverine has been occupying our thoughts for so long, and X-Men ’97‘s weekly release and insane levels of acclaim have well and truly stolen the show for this first half of the year.
It’s easy to forget, then, that Marvel Studios’ opening salvo for 2024 was Echo, the Hawkeye spinoff and Daredevil: Born Again prelude starring Alaqua Cox as Maya Lopez. Unusually, Disney Plus elected to drop all five episodes of the series in one go way back on Jan. 9, mere days after What If…? season 2 aired its finale and concluded the MCU’s 2023.
Due to its slight nature, lack of a staggered release, and mixed reviews, Echo hasn’t exactly had the long shelf life of most MCU projects, but that’s not to say that it was a flop. New Disney Plus data confirms it was a much bigger success than fans (or haters) might’ve expected.
Marvel snatches two out of the top three most-watched Disney Plus series of 2024 (so far)
As per Variety, the breakdown of Disney Plus’ viewership across the first quarter of 2024 contains a few unexpected twists. Claiming a whopping 23.3% of the platform’s entire TV viewing from January to April, almost a full quarter, is buzzy book adaptation Percy Jackson and the Olympians. In second place, however, is Echo, earning a 11.8% slice of the viewership.
While that’s almost half of what Percy Jackson achieved, that’s still a mighty impressive feat for Echo, especially considering how it certainly seemed like Disney was trying to wash its hands of the show as quickly as possible and had little faith in it. Things look even better for Marvel when you consider that X-Men ’97 takes the third spot, hoovering up 6.8% of the streamer’s total TV viewership.
When even two more cultish Marvel releases like Echo and X-Men 97 prove to be among the biggest Disney Plus TV shows of 2024, it definitely calls all that talk about superhero fatigue and the death of the MCU into question. Has it been a generally quiet year for D+ so far in general? Well, yes — much of the rest of the chart is taken up with 2023 releases, like Loki season 2 and The Mandalorian season 3 — but clearly audiences are still hungry for MCU content whatever the form, and even medium.
Bob Iger is determined to cut back on how many Marvel shows are releasing per year, likely limiting it to just two from now on, but while that’s a good strategy for the movies, maybe a constant stream of MCU TV is exactly what the viewers want, need, and crave.