The Walt Disney Company and Marvel Studios revealed that Daredevil: Born Again performed worse than Lucasfilm’s The Acolyte in the first five days after both premiered.
Back in June 2024, The Walt Disney Company revealed to Variety that The Acolyte hit 4.8 million views in its first day and went on to have 11.1 million views in its first five days.
The company revealed its viewership numbers for Daredevil: Born Again to Variety as well and the show only clocked in at 7.5 million views over its first five days. That’s a 32.4% decline from The Acolyte.
If you recall, The Walt Disney Company cancelled The Acolyte after its first season due to viewership being too low for its cost. Disney Co-Chairman Alan Bergman told Vulture, “So as it relates to Acolyte, we were happy with our performance, but it wasn’t where we needed it to be given the cost structure of that title, quite frankly, to go and make a season two. So that’s the reason why we didn’t do that.”
It’s also likely that the show performed worse than Agatha All Along. Variety reported that the Kathryn Hahn led show did 9.3 million views in its first seven days back in September 2024.
Daredevil performs slightly better than Agatha on average with 1.5 million views per day compared to Agatha’s 1.3 million, but it’s quite likely that much of the viewership is indeed front-loaded and there’s less views the further from the show’s release date.
The fact that the show performed worse than The Acolyte is not at all surprising given the show did not chart on Luminate’s Top 10 original streaming chart for the week of its debut.
Landman was the 10th place show with 352.2 million minutes viewed. The Acolyte did chart with 210 million minutes watched in its first week. It then saw its second week numbers go up to 380.5 million.
Furthermore, IMDb review totals indicated that The Acolyte performed better than Daredevil: Born Again as well. After its first three episodes were released, The Acolyte’s first episode had over 11,000 reviews, its second episode had over 9,900, and its third episode had over 7,500.
In comparison. Daredevil’s first episode only has over 8,100 as of writing and its second episode is only over 6,700.
Google Trends also indicated that The Acolyte had more interest than Daredevil: Born Again. The Acolyte had a higher peak when it released compared to Daredevil: Born Again.
The Acolyte hit a 100 during the week of June 2-8 while Daredevil: Born Again hit 60 for the week of March 2-8.
What do you make of Daredevil: Born Again performing worse than The Acolyte?
Star Wars even in its weakened state still has an audience and maybe the popularity difference can explain the difference in numbers. That being said Born Again definitely didn't set the internet on fire and I'm glad that that subversive garbage failed.
I feel many many people, myself included, will wait until all episodes are available to watch. There is so much choice these days there is just no need to start watching a show that is only going to slowly dribble out its episodes weekly as it would ten years ago. The sooner they and others grasp this, the better for their shows successes. I will watch Daredevil, but not until it’s ripe.