Loki and Ahsoka ratings reveal back-to-back hits for Disney Plus

The numbers are in, and people have been tuning in to Disney Plus lately, all thanks to the platform’s latest Star Wars and Marvel Cinematic Universe offerings, Ahsoka and Loki season 2, which premiered on Oct. 5, 2023.

For fans of both Star Wars and the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Ahsoka noticeably ended the same week that Loki premiered, offering loyal customers continuous content to consume on the streaming platform. Both are two of the more popular original shows that Disney Plus has produced. While the Star Wars series has more consistent viewership numbers, the Marvel shows are less predictable.

Disney claims that Ahsoka’s premiere captured 14 million views in the first five days. With streaming, it is much more difficult to compare statistics, as this number of “views” does not offer concrete information about how many households actually watched the episode. Those figures  should translate to equate that millions of households watched Ahsoka. The most solid figure for the Ahsoka two-episode premiere is that it brought in 829 million viewing minutes. That is in line with other Star Wars shows on Disney Plus.

Obi-Wan Kenobi reportedly had 958 million minutes for its similar opening strategy, while Andor garnered 624 million minutes for its first three chapters, according to Nielsen. Earlier this year, Nielsen reported The Mandalorian claimed 823 viewing minutes upon the third season’s premiere. Samba TV reported that Ahsoka’s finale drew 863 thousand “households”, which is lower than the premiere, but the entire season continues to point Disney’s Star Wars content in the right direction.

Disney also reported their opening figures for Loki’s recent Season 2 premiere, with almost 11 million views in its first three days. This should come as no surprise as its first season was the most-watched MCU show on Disney Plus, while the previous three series – Ms. Marvel, She-Hulk, and Secret Invasion – recorded some of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s lowest viewership numbers for the streaming service.

So the return of Loki — the first MCU series on the platform to break out of the single-season formula — is a welcome sight for Disney. However, the most recent release with a direct link to the show is Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, which came out in theaters earlier this year. It is actually the first Ant-Man feature not to reach $500 million in the global box office as well as the first MCU film after the 2020-2021 pandemic era not to hit that milestone. The multiversal villain Kang headlined opposite the tiny heroes in Quantumania, following Jonathan Majors’ first appearance as the conqueror in Loki’s season 1 finale. So far, Kang has not appeared in the first third of Loki season 2. With so much of the multiversal conflict left to explore and discover, Disney is certainly hoping that Loki’s ratings will stay high for the final four chapters of season 2.

Can Disney Plus continue this momentum with its Star Wars and Marvel TV shows? For now, you can watch new episodes of Loki on Thursday nights at 9 p.m. EST.