I confess I'm kind of surprised here, I figured after the hype around how good season 1 was there would be more folks checking out season 2 even with the release schedule
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The only thing I can think is that people don't mind coded parallels to overwhelming modern problems/issues in their space fantasy, but hearing "omg it's like Star Wars was ripped from the headlines" may be a bit much when they're already living through this shit.
Pure speculation here, but of Disney's Star War series, I would guess The Acolyte probably had the biggest target-audience overlap with Andor, so it's possible they burned some of the viewership with that one.
Also, Andor just has a weak elevator pitch. It's the epitome of "No, it's good, trust me!"
Honestly everything is shit right now anyway, my media consumption is about hiding away and forgetting it. Andor might be the best ever show about what its about but its still leaning into the everything is horrible narrative. Even with a kind of happy ending no thank you.
I think a lot of the potential Andor viewers cancelled their sub in protest to Disney kissing the ring. I know I did. I wish I could watch this show, but I have to wait to sail the high seas to see it.
I love Star Wars and I love Season 1, but I haven’t started it yet. Part of that is because I’m catching up on Yellowjackets, and the other part is that starting with 3 episodes was a little much.
Looks like the insane scheduling is also due to needing to release everything prior to May 31st for Emmy consideration. Halfway through the season already and just floored by the quality. When you are ready you’ll probably really enjoy it.
As someone that generally enjoys most of what Disney has done with Star Wars, I’m excited to watch it. I also might make my wife watch Season 1 and have us both go straight into 2.
nobody I know has Disney+, and I don’t want to subscribe to watch exactly one show. plus I don’t watch stuff that seems likely to get cancelled, cause I don’t like being disappointed by cliffhangers, and Andor had “cancelled after a couple seasons” practically stamped on it
good news is the show is actually ending where they want it to end next week rather than being cancelled, so I recommend acquiring and binging it at some point
Disney+ was the easiest choice for first service to cut. As someone with no kids it's far and away the most evil company for the least amount of things I want to watch with the most egregious advertising. Season 1 of Andor was awesome, but with how poor I am there's nothing bringing me back to D+
I actually wonder if it would be doing better if it wasn’t “Star Wars”? Being part of a sprawling expanded universe feels like you need a certain amount of buy-in to enjoy any of it. Like, it doesn’t matter how good this show is if I have to watch three things I don’t care about to understand it
There’s been more Star Wars content produced in the last 5-6 years than everything previous combined. That’s a really hard sell for an audience for whom Star Wars used to be 3-6 movies and maybe a dozen characters they could name.
Viewership of prestige dramas are generally really low vs. lower-brow content. Not sure how Andor stacks up vs. something like Succession but yeah, prestige dramas are mostly commercial losers sadly.
The SW audience is turning out to be small compared to the huge grosses of the first few new JJ-era movies. As an event with decades of buildup, there was pent up die hard demand and a willingness by casuals to check it out. But casuals clearly lost interest and diehards are fewer and pretty dumb.
I can't start season 2. I just can't bring myself to watch a show right now about sacrificing yourself and your loved ones in order to temporarily inconvenience a fascist government. A government that returns stronger after the setback!
I wonder how many people there are like me, who loved season 1 but haven't jumped into season 2 just because of how overwhelming the three episode drops are
I think the three-episodes-at-a-time dump might be working against it tbh. I fell behind early due to work and it's been an almighty struggle to get back on top of things (whereas the spacing of S1 made it much easier)
Yeah I get what they’re doing with the structure and think it works really well but I wish I wasn’t getting three episodes dumped on me every week. It makes discussion and online interaction harder too unless you binge all three eps when they drop.
I'm honestly more surprised how Ahsoka did more strongly on these graphs. It's a pretty unremarkable show, and it's 'fan service appeal' is going to primarily include fans of the cartoons and not the larger general movie audience.
same, I know she was a pretty beloved character from Clone Wars and a lot of folks liked Rebels but I didn't think that overlap was enough to push its audience that far past the rest of what they're putting out
especially because the show itself was extremely meh
But yeah, if you look at the graph that starts that thread, your immediate takeaway is that Andor is middle of the pack and Ahsoka is the outlier. (Though that might change if the graph included older entries like Mandalorian)
That said, I like any graph that undercuts the prevailing narrative that The Acolyte was a failure, because sometimes I feel like I'm the only person that really loved The Acolyte.
It wasn’t perfect but they did a good job of exploiting trope expectations (and quietly skewering some of them) with the twins, took some interesting swings, and genuinely created one of the best villains since Clone Wars Maul.
There are many things I like about The Acolyte but one of the things I like best is when any Star Wars extended universe thing starts with 'the galaxy is a big place and therefore different cultures probably discovered and interact with this thing called 'the Force' in very different ways.
The Filoniverse always fell flat for me because their focus on the same handful of characters and cultures always made the galaxy feel small. Andor and Ahsoka do the opposite and make it feel big (and Andor still does it while providing lots of fan service!)
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Also, Andor just has a weak elevator pitch. It's the epitome of "No, it's good, trust me!"
I can't start season 2. I just can't bring myself to watch a show right now about sacrificing yourself and your loved ones in order to temporarily inconvenience a fascist government. A government that returns stronger after the setback!
But I'm odd like that.
especially because the show itself was extremely meh