Charlie Vickers as Sauron and Morfydd Clark as Galadriel n The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (2024), Amazon MGM Studios

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Season 2 premiere reportedly suffered a nearly 50% decline in viewership compared to its Season 1 premiere.

Charlie Vickers as Annatar in The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (2024), Amazon MGM Studios

Data tracking firm Samba TV reported that the first episode of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Season 2 was only watched by 902,000 US households in its first five days.

Back in February 2023 following the conclusion of the show’s first season, Samba TV revealed that the premiere episode of the show was watched by 1.8 million US households in its first four days after release. It eventually racked up 3.3 million views in its first 15 days.

 

The decline from 1.8 million to 902,000 is a whopping 49.8%.

Ismael Cruz Córdova as Arondir in The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (2024), Amazon MGM Studios

While the decline is massive it is not really surprising given a report from Kim Masters at The Hollywood Reporter back in April 2023 revealed that 63% of individuals who watched part of the show’s premiere back in 2022 did not complete the show.

She wrote, “While Amazon, like other streamers, provides only limited data — and internally, it held information even more closely than usual on the series — sources confirm that The Rings of Power had a 37 percent domestic completion rate (customers who watched the entire series).”

For those outside the United States, the completion rate was higher. Masters shared, “Overseas, it reached 45 percent. (A 50 percent completion rate would be a solid but not spectacular result, according to insiders).”

Charlie Vickers as Sauron in The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (2024), Amazon MGM Studios

Not only does it look like the show has driven away a significant portion of its potential audience with the first season, but the second season appears to be driving even more people away even with a three-episode premiere.

Looking at IMDb reviews, the third episode had over 30% less than the first episode indicating that a significant portion of the audience watched the first episode or just parts of it and did not continue watching the second or third episode despite both being available to watch immediately after the first episode.

The first episode currently has a total of 8,900 reviews. The second episode has 6,800 reviews. That’s a decline of 23.59%. The third episode has just 6,200 reviews. That’s a decline of 30.34% from the first episode and 8.2% from the second episode.