It’s a scary time to be a fan of Marvel’s Netflix shows, with Thanos seemingly having become a Netflix executive, as the past few weeks have seen The Defenders–related series cut in half, with both Iron Fist and Luke Cage receiving cancellation notices. Seeing as we’ve just had the release of Daredevil season 3 not too long ago, everyone’s beginning to worry about what the future holds for the most popular of the four shows, even despite the great reviews that Matt Murdock’s latest run found itself with.
Unfortunately, there’s no word from the streaming giant just yet on what fate awaits the Man Without Fear, but it’s certainly not looking good for the Netflix corner of the MCU right now. A fascinating new report from Screen Rant has revealed that every Marvel show on the platform has been losing viewers steadily for years. Conducted alongside Jumpshot, “a San Francisco-based analytics company,” the outlet’s study paints a very interesting picture of what’s going on.
From what we understand, Jumpshot tracks “five billion actions a day across 100 million devices to deliver insights into online consumer behavior. To compile the data on Netflix Originals, they looked at the viewing behavior and activity of the company’s US members.” And the results for the Marvel series in particular aren’t too pretty.
You can head on over to Screen Rant to browse the full report, as it’s quite long, but in short, they found a clear downward trend in viewing figures for each new season of the MCU shows ever since Daredevil season 2. That’s when the drop really began. In the time since, only season 3 of Daredevil and season 1 of The Punisher have broken the trend. Otherwise, each season of whatever given show releases has seen less viewers than the last.
Another fascinating insight in the report is an index that Jumpshot put together to examine how the various shows performed in their first week on the streaming site. Basically, the number next to the season provides a better sense of scale for the graph you see above.
So, in other words, if everyone tuned in for Daredevil season 2, then by the time Iron Fist season 2 rolled around, only 29% of viewers were still watching the Marvel Netflix shows. And again, you can see how the Man Without Fear and Frank Castle stand apart as outliers.
Daredevil season 2: 100
Luke Cage season 1: 92
Iron Fist season 1: 80
The Defenders: 61
The Punisher season 1: 70
Jessica Jones season 2: 53
Luke Cage season 2: 38
Iron Fist season 2: 29
Daredevil season 3: 43
Where does all this leave the Marvel Netflix shows, then? Well, as you can probably tell, not in a very good place. True, Daredevil season 3 is being hailed as an incredible achievement by critics, but as the index above shows, it still didn’t manage to get very many viewers to return to watch it.
If you ask us, this pocket of the Marvel Cinematic Universe is in serious danger of collapsing and unless The Punisher season 2 and Jessica Jones season 3 are absolute home runs in terms of viewing figures, they may be the last we see of these small screen heroes.