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

New viewership data from Luminate reveals that The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power’s total watch time for its third week declined by over 51%.

Morfydd Clark as Galadriel in The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (2024), Amazon MGM Studios

Data analytics company Luminate reports that The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power only garnered 372.7 million minutes watched for the week of September 6th through September 12th.

That is 51% less than the show’s second week where it garnered 764.7 million minutes watched. In its first week the show only garnered 63.2 million minutes watched albeit it was only available to watch for a single day in Luminate’s weekly window. Variety reported the show failed to chart in the top 10, but instead was 37th on Luminate’s chart in its first week.

Luminate’s Streaming Originals Data for Television for the week of September 6th through September 12th

READ: ‘The Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power’ Season 2 Premiere Viewership Reportedly Suffers Nearly 50% Decline From Season 1

Now, obviously the second week should have gotten significantly more watch time because Prime Video and Amazon MGM Studios released three episodes right off the bat with a total run time of 204 minutes while the fourth episode, which debuted on September 4th only has a total run time of 65 minutes, and the fifth episode’s run time, which debuted on September 11th, is just 61 minutes.

However, the fact that the second week only hit a peak of 764.7 million has to be disastrous for Prime Video given Nielsen reported back in 2022 that the first week of the show’s two episode premiere raked in 1.253 billion minutes watched. Those first two episodes only had a total run time of 132 minutes.

An Orc in The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (2024), Amazon MGM Studios

So even if you give Prime Video its best case scenario, the show only brought in around 4.06 million viewers. That’s way down compared to the estimated 9.5 million viewers the first season brought in.

That’s a decline of 57.2%.

Tanya Moodie as Gundabel in The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (2024), Amazon MGM Studios

Luminate is not the only data analytics company that shows Prime Video’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power has seen massive viewership falloff with its second season.

Samba TV reported it only tracked 902,000 US households watched the first episode of Season 2 within the first five days.

That was down from 1.8 million that tuned in for the Season 1 premiere over just four days. That’s a decline of a whopping 49.8%.

Not only are the premiere viewership numbers way down for Season 2, but it appears people who checked out the premiere for Season 2 are already abandoning the show.

IMDb review scores for each episode of Season 2 have fallen from episode to episode. As of writing the first episode has 12,000 reviews, the second has 10,000, the third has 9,900, the fourth has 7,600, and the newly released fifth episode has just 4,100.

The decline from the first episode to the fifth is currently 65.8% and the decline from the first to the fourth is 36.6%.

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Season 2 IMDb scores by individual episode

All of this data appears to lend credence to a report in The Hollywood Reporter from April 2023. Kim Masters 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).”

Gavi Singh Chera as Merimac in The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (2024), Amazon MGM Studios

Nevertheless, Prime Video attempted to refute much of this data by issuing an ambiguous claim, “With 40 million global viewers and counting, thank you to the fans for making The Rings of Power the #1 Prime Video show in the world.”

The Lord of the Rings on Prime on X

Not only is the company posting ambiguous posts to try and shape a narrative that people are not leaving this show en masse, but the showrunners continue attack fans of J.R.R. Tolkien and The Lord of the Rings.

Showrunner J.D. Payne told The Hollywood Reporter, “The Fellowship had to look to each other, and those who support it, and remember what it’s fighting for. And when we see that millions of people are watching this and responding so positively to it — that’s who we’re fighting for. And those who watch every episode and [negatively] write about it on social media and make YouTube videos, we’re happy to have you guys, too. It wouldn’t be a journey through Middle-earth without some trolls along the way.”

This strategy did not work out for Lucasfilm and The Acolyte. It is unlikely to work out for Prime Video, Amazon MGM Studios, and The Rings of Power.

Osha Aniseya (Amandla Stenberg) in Lucasfilm’s THE ACOLYTE, season one, exclusively on Disney+. ©.

In fact, The Rings of Power is already at The Acolyte levels. Luminate reported that the show garnered 380.5 million minutes watched in its second week. It then fell to 262 million by its third week before falling to 232.2 million in its fourth week.

By the show’s fifth week it fell off Luminate’s top 10 chart with viewership below 282 million.

(Center): Vernestra Rwoh (Rebecca Henderson) in Lucasfilm’s THE ACOLYTE, season one, exclusively on Disney+. ©2024 Lucasfilm Ltd. & TM. All Rights Reserved.

What do you make of this viewership data that all points to viewers completely abandoning The Rings of Power?