The world has a new hero in Iman Vellani’s Ms. Marvel. Her new Disney+ show has just landed, and the bright and vibrant Kamala Khan is here. Generally speaking, audiences are loving it. The Direct’s own Savannah Sanders noted how the show “has its own unique voice and something to say while also grounding the MCU in a way few projects ever have.”
Even despite the praise, there is the usual loud minority of children review-bombing the show for all the wrong reasons—not that there’s ever a right reason for the practice in the first place.
Vellani’s excitement for the role, and her general love towards Marvel, should be reason enough for most fans to want to tune in and check out the new hero. Not to mention how she’ll be going on to star in next year’s The Marvels, which will continue to cement Kamala Khan as a key member of the MCU.
Despite all of the positive reactions to the new Disney+ series, and the limitless potential that her story has, the ratings for the project’s viewership in its first five days are in and they don’t quite reach the same heights as other series. In fact, they’re one of the worst that Marvel Studios has ever seen.
Samba TV reported that Iman Vellani’s Ms. Marvel did not perform well with regard to the number of viewers watching across the United States. In its report, the service revealed how only 775K US households watched the premiere episode within the first five days of it being on Disney+.
To date, that makes the new coming-of-age story one of the worst-performing MCU debuts on Disney+. The only series potentially behind it is What If…?, though that project only has premiere data for its first day.
For comparison, here’s the five-day premiere viewership for Marvel Studios’ other shows:
WandaVision: 1.6 Million
The Falcon and the Winter Soldier: 1.8 Million
Loki: 2.5 Million
What If..?: 281k (first-day audiences)
Hawkeye: 1.5 Million
Moon Knight: 1.8 Million
One of the biggest factors going against Ms. Marvel that none of Marvel’s other outings had to deal with is competition. Currently, the Star Wars series Obi-Wan Kenobi has its new installments premiering on the same day and time. So, not only does it have competition, but it’s going against Ewan McGregor’s fan-favorite character, whose show debuted with 2.14 million viewers during that same window of time. The game was rigged from the start.
Despite these numbers, it’s important not to correlate the audience size and quality; they’re not mutually exclusive. Many have declared Ms. Marvel to be one of their favorite MCU series to date, despite the immature review-bombing taking place and low-scoring performance.
Seeing that the upcoming Andor and She-Hulk will both overlap as well, these lower audience numbers could become the norm. Many feel Disney should consider releasing Marvel and Star Wars content on different days, which would help each project perform better and remain part of the internet conversation for longer.
Hopefully, they’ll see sense in that strategy, or else it will only get worse when more projects are released down the line.
