Moon Knight Had the Lowest Rated MCU Series Premiere So Far
The Nielsen ratings reflect that Moon Knight has premiered at the lowest streaming ratings for any MCU streaming series. The Disney+ spinoff series premiered its first episode on March 30, 2022, introducing Marvel fans to Oscar Isaac's portrayal of the hero Moon Knight, who channels the mythical power of the Egyptian moon god Khonshu. The series also stars Ethan Hawke, F. Murray Abraham, May Calamawy, Lucy Thackeray, and the late Gaspard Ulliel. The six-episode season is currently running, with its finale slated to debut on the platform on May 4, 2022, just before the premiere of the newest Marvel film, Sam Raimi's Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.
The series has taken a different tack than the previous MCU series, following the character's journey with mental health more prominently than his superheroic antics. Moon Knight is the mantle taken on by Marc Spector, an American mercenary who has dissociative identity disorder. The series opens with him inhabiting his alternate personality Steven Grant, a bumbling Brit who works at a museum gift shop and has a passion for Egyptology. Throughout the series, the two personalities have had different goals and fought for control over their body, though the events of the penultimate episode have led to them learning more about one another and set up a finale where Moon Knight will face off against the sinister cult leader Arthur Harrow.
Per THR, Nielsen has just reported their streaming ratings results from the week of March 28, 2022 through April 3, 2022. Moon Knight, which premiered midway through that period on March 30, was watched for a total of 418 million minutes by streaming users, landing it in fifth place for the week. This is somewhat understandable, considering that the #1 slot was taken by Netflix's Bridgerton, which premiered an entire season at once instead of a single episode. In fact Netflix claimed the other slots above Moon Knight as well with The Last Kingdom at #2, Is It Cake? at #3, and Inventing Anna at #4, meaning Moon Knight was the highest-performing Disney+ original series on the chart.
This rating is not insubstantial, but it is by a hair the lowest premiere that an MCU series on Disney+ has scored. It's just behind their very first series WandaVision (434 million minutes) and their most critically divisive series The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (495 million). However it can't hold a candle to the massive streaming numbers raked in by Loki (731 million minutes) and the two-episode premiere of Hawkeye (853 million minutes).
It makes sense that WandaVision had the lowest-rated premiere because it was Disney+'s first MCU spinoff and audiences needed the word of mouth to build before they took the plunge. Moon Knight's premiere may have experienced a similar challenge, considering the fact that it's the first MCU series to introduce a brand new lead hero rather than centering a familiar face from the films. As the ratings come in for the next episodes of Moon Knight, it will remain to be seen whether there's an uptick that reflects the show grew in a similar way to Scarlet Witch's streaming outing.
Source: THR