2024 MCU Viewership Trends: ‘Echo’ and ‘Agatha All Along’ Rank as Lowest Watched Live-Action Shows

2024 saw the release of several original shows on the Disney+ streaming platform, most of them related to Marvel and Star Wars franchises. MCU offerings last year included ‘Echo,’ ‘Agatha All Along,’ and a revival of the popular X-Men show, ‘X-Men ’97.’ While all shows had decent critical reception it seems that viewership numbers reflect a different picture altogether.

According to data provided by Luminate, Disney+ saw a decline in viewership for major 2024 Marvel series ‘Echo’ and ‘Agatha All Along,’ which performed worse than 2023 hits like ‘Loki’ and ‘Secret Invasion,’ – and we use the term “hit” loosely to describe ‘Secret Invasion,’ but according to this data, it had more viewers than last year’s shows.

As you can see, ‘Agatha All Along’ was MCU’s most-watched show last year with 2,284M minutes watched overall, followed by ‘Echo’ with 1.537M minutes watched and ‘X-Men ’97’ with 1.437M minutes watched.

‘X-Men ’97’ got the best reviews by far out of all three shows, but it still somehow managed to be the least-watched, confirming earlier reports that not that many people watched it. Keep in mind that animated shows do not draw in audiences as much as live-action shows do, so that would explain the reviews, the fact that the show was renewed for 2 more seasons, and this “low” viewership figures.

When it comes to the Star Wars franchise, “universally hated” ‘The Acolyte’ managed to outperform all Marvel shows and land second with 2.673M minutes watched. Other Star Wars shows like ‘The Bad Batch,’ ‘Skeleton Crew,’ ‘Ahsoka (2023),’ and ‘The Mandalorian’ (2023) are occupying the lower end of the list.

All Disney+ original shows were dwarfed by ‘Percy Jackson and the Olympians’ which was released in late 2023. Despite the franchise having only two previous film adaptations, ‘Percy Jackson’ had never been given a faithful, author-approved version before, making the new series stand out, which would explain the high viewership compared to the rest of the list.

The Luminate Film & TV 2024 Year-End Report highlighted a key trend in the entertainment industry: studios are at a crossroads between continuing to build on existing franchises or investing in new intellectual properties.

The report also pointed out that while established franchises can be a safe bet, there is a limit to how much studios can squeeze from them. The decline in viewership suggests that when too much content is created under a single franchise without proper management, audiences can lose interest, aka we’re dealing with a case of franchise fatigue over here.

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