Rings of Power

Amazon
Easily the most ambitious project in Amazon Prime Video history, if not maybe even all of streaming, was a billion dollar budgeted original Lord of the Rings show, Rings of Power, now airing its second season. When it was first reported that Rings of Power was in the works, there was this idea that a five-year run for the show was already mapped out.

As time went on, it seemed like perhaps that wasn’t a full guarantee. Season 2 was in fact greenlit but it has seen a large decline in viewership from the data we have available via third party estimates.

The numbers are plainly terrible. Luminate, the firm estimating the viewership, says that season 2 debuted behind Netflix’s Worst Ex Ever True Crime series. But the detail (via Variety):

Rings of Power season 1’s Labor Day premiere of 132 minutes of two episodes brought in 1.2 billion minutes watched in four days.
Rings of Power season 2’s premiere of three episodes totaling 204 minutes brought in 553.5 million minutes watched in its first four days.

That’s less than half, even with an entire extra episode to watch, and reports from other firms like Samba indicate similar figures (1.8 million households for season 1 down to 900,000 for season 2), even as Amazon does not release that data itself. Just its own Top 10 list, where it currently sits above The Boys, which ended its fourth season all the way back in mid-July.

To be clear this is not normal. Even if you’re not expecting some sort of Game of Thrones year-over-year surge, House of the Dragon, which also dropped some viewership this year, only went down about 15%.

I’m not sure if Amazon is going to be prepared to fully commit to this five season plan. The first season was the most-watched premiere in Prime Video history, but if these numbers continue to crash, is it going to be worth it to press on for another three years, rather than calling it early?

It’s not as if Amazon Prime Video is short of hits. It has struck, gold with The Boys and even managed to create an effective spin-off with Gen V. Reacher is huge (literally and figuratively) and is one of the most consistent performers on its charts. Fallout debuted with massive numbers only behind Rings of Power itself, and landed a number of Emmy nominations. But RoP? It’s seeing a rapid decline in interest, and it’s not clear how that might turn around over the course of three more years if this is the trend we’re already seeing just between the first two seasons.