New Luminate data confirmed this week that Daredevil: Born Again Season 2 has shed roughly half its audience compared to Season 1. In its first five weeks, Season 2 drew 4.515 million views and 10.867 million hours watched. Season 1 generated 8.357 million views and 24 million hours watched across the same window. That is a 46% decline in views and a 54% decline in hours watched.
Season 1 failed to chart in Nielsen’s weekly Top 10 streaming originals for its entire run. Season 2 has not charted either. The premiere week of Season 2 came in below 449 million minutes, the threshold needed to crack tenth place, a bar that She-Hulk: Attorney at Law and Ms. Marvel both cleared despite being widely mocked as the MCU’s worst outings.
Wilson Bethel, who returned as Bullseye in Season 2, said what the numbers confirm. “People have been waiting six, seven years,” he said. “How different does it hit, if out the gate, after that wait, you get like a f***in’ banger season of TV?” Season 1 was not that. The production collapsed mid-shoot, replaced its showrunner, and retooled from scratch. The result was a season split between a gritty Kingpin storyline and lighter filler episodes that felt grafted from a different show entirely. Critics gave it 87% on Rotten Tomatoes. Audiences who showed up once largely did not come back.
Season 2 is a measurably better piece of television. Showrunner Dario Scardapane had a full creative season without inheriting someone else’s wreckage. The critical score climbed to 91%. Krysten Ritter returned as Jessica Jones. Jon Bernthal’s Punisher appeared. The show made real use of its street-level premise. None of it moved the viewership needle.
For context: Loki Season 2 drew 10.9 million views in its first five days. Agatha All Along drew 9.3 million. Both of those shows were built on characters with far less established fan demand than Daredevil. The Netflix series that ended in 2018 had a passionate, vocal fanbase that campaigned for years to bring it back. Marvel answered with Born Again in 2024. The fans who campaigned for the show watched Season 1, found it uneven, and are not returning for Season 2 at the rate Marvel needs.
Marvel is responding by expanding the universe rather than examining the viewership. Season 3 is already filming in Brooklyn with Mike Colter as Luke Cage, Finn Jones as Iron Fist, and Krysten Ritter confirmed back as Jessica Jones. A Punisher special presentation arrives in May. A Jessica Jones project is reportedly in development. The street-level MCU is being built into a full Defenders reunion on the back of a show that cannot clear the Nielsen Top 10 floor.
The audience for the original Netflix Daredevil was built over three seasons of consistent, grounded quality. Born Again had one shot to match that and spent its first season recovering from a production disaster. Season 2 corrected the creative direction. The viewers who would have responded to that correction had already left.
Does Season 2’s 54% viewership decline end the street-level MCU, or does Marvel’s commitment to Season 3 and the Defenders reunion change your calculus on whether this universe has a future?
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I think I know what the problem is. The normally right-wing audience that would watch this show is tuning out because they have internalized the idea that Disney creates woke schlock. The remaining left-wing audience is tuning out because the show is not left-wing enough.
What Disney is trying to do is reprogram the pool of leftists who remain to watch the show.
Lowest audience for Season 1 becomes half for season 2. What a joke marvel is.