'The Falcon And The Winter Soldier' Is Apparently The Most Watched Disney+ Premiere Ever
Even though Zack Snyder's Justice League dominated the online conversation over the weekend, Marvel's The Falcon and The Winter Soldier enjoyed its fair share of success as well. Disney+ announced that the first episode of the Marvel Cinematic Universe series became the most watched series premiere ever on the streaming service.
Disney+ sent out a press release celebrating the debut of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier as the the most watched series premiere ever on Disney+, based on the opening weekend viewership from Friday, March 19 through Sunday, March 22. It's also the most watched title overall for the same time period on a global basis, thanks to the Disney+ Hotstar markets.
As it stands, Marvel's WandaVision and the second season premiere of The Mandalorian come in behind The Falcon and the Winter Soldier as the next two biggest opening weekends on Disney+ to date. Are the viewership numbers higher because more people have subscribed to Disney+ as time has gone on? Is it merely the increase in international markets boosting the audience for these shows? Or is it the buzz about Marvel's more conventional TV series that has fueled the premiere ratings? We really don't know, and that's a problem.
This kind of news is meant to be celebratory for the studio, but it's also a bit of a questionable situation because we have no way of knowing whether these streaming numbers are accurate without any other form of measurement. When it comes to studios announcing their streaming viewership, we're basically taking their word for it. While they're likely not lying about the high viewership, there may be certain specific details not mentioned to make ratings sound more impressive than they actually are.
Much like the movies of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the audience and interest in these shows is bound to grow as time goes on. Perhaps some fans are merely waiting to check in with these Marvel Cinematic Universe stories until there's more to binge in a single month. Since there were two weeks between the end of WandaVision and the beginning of The Falcon and The Winter Soldier, that gives people plenty of time to sign up to binge WandaVision and then stick around for weekly installments of the latest series.
Honestly, it would be nice if studios started provided more detailed statistics on viewership instead of these vague self-congratulatory press releases. But unfortunately, there's no easy way to measure streaming very accurately when the studio is the one in control of the streaming service.
The first episode of The Falcon and The Winter Soldier is available now with new episodes arriving on Fridays.