In what appears to be a bit of good news for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which has had its fair share of ups and downs in 2023, Loki Season 2 is seemingly off to a solid start.
The new season, which follows Tom Hiddleston's eponymous character as he continues to deal with the Time Variance Authority, drew in more than 10.9 million views globally in the first three days since its Oct. 5 premiere, Disney said today. The company added that that makes it the second-highest-viewed premiere of 2023, behind only The Mandalorian Season 3.
Now, let's break that down a bit as much as we can: for one thing, streaming data is a bit of the Wild West, and emerged as a key issue during the now-officially ended writers' strike. Disney in particular only just recently started reporting select numbers, including the premiere of Ahsoka.
Putting Loki up against that aforementioned Star Wars series, at first glance, you might say that Loki debuted lower, as Disney said Ahsoka premiered to 14 million views - but, Disney reported the five-day total of Ahsoka, rather than the three-day, like Loki's. Basically, Ahsoka got an extra two days in its reported viewership, and based on Disney's own assertion that Loki's premiere only comes in under The Mandalorian Season 3 for 2023, we can assume that Loki's three-day numbers are stronger than Ahsoka's.
It's interesting, too, that Disney is reporting Loki's three-day numbers instead of its five-day. That method seemingly has it under The Little Mermaid's premiere on Disney+ with 16 million views and Elemental's 26.4 million views - but, again, those are both five-day numbers.
And even the way streaming numbers are being measured has been the subject of recent change. As Disney notes, the "views" metric that is being reported here is "defined as total stream time divided by runtime," which is very similar to the system Netflix started adhering to in June. If we really want to shake it up and measure across streaming services, Netflix said its One Piece adaptation (which was renewed a mere two weeks after its debut) garnered 18.5 million views in its first four days of release.
So, while Loki seemingly debuted lower than that, Disney is still confident enough to tout its three-day premiere numbers instead of its five-day. And, taking the information that's been given to us by Disney, that 10.9 million views in three days seems like a pretty solid start.
Loki Season 2 debuted last Thursday and will continue for six episodes. Having seen the first four episodes, our reviewer warned that fans should temper their expectations.
"[T]he absence of director Kate Herron has seemingly removed the series’ wily sense of anything-goes possibility, effectively turning Season 2 – and, shockingly, Loki himself – into an obedient, uninteresting cog in the MCU’s increasingly unwieldy mega-structure," we wrote.
One way or another, Loki has proven to be one of the MCU's most popular TV properties, with viewership for its first season beating out WandaVision, Falcon and the Winter Soldier, and Hawkeye.
