Last Year’s Top 10 Disney Plus TV Shows: Six Featured Star Wars Series

In 2024, Star Wars solidified its dominance on Disney+ by occupying over half of the platform’s top 10 TV shows. Since the inception of Disney+ in 2019, Star Wars series have played a pivotal role, with The Mandalorian standing out as its flagship offering. However, the depth of Disney+’s reliance on this iconic franchise has never been as prominently illuminated as it is in this latest data from 2024.

According to a report shared by Luminate, five Star Wars series (including one that represents two seasons) secured places within the platform’s top 10 shows.

The Top 10 Disney+ TV Shows in 2024
TV Show Title	Minutes Watched (Millions)
Percy Jackson and the Olympians	3, 070
The Acolyte	2, 673
Agatha All Along	2, 284
Echo	1, 537
X-Men ’97	1, 437
Star Wars: The Bad Batch	923
Star Wars: Skeleton Crew	914
Ahsoka	841
The Mandalorian Season 3	811
The Mandalorian Season 1	693

Covering the period from December 29, 2023, to December 31, 2024, this data highlights the crucial role that Star Wars continues to play in Disney+’s success, despite some series not debuting in 2024. Interestingly, The Acolyte surprisingly climbed to the second position, particularly since it was canceled in August 2024. Furthermore, Star Wars: The Bad Batch showcased impressive performance by surpassing four live-action series—a notable achievement in the competitive streaming landscape.

Star Wars: A Cornerstone of Disney+ Success

The Platform’s Dependence on the Franchise

The Mandalorian Season 3 - Grogu and Din Djarin

The undeniable conclusion from this data is that Disney+ heavily relies on the Star Wars franchise for its ongoing success. This reliance could pose challenges moving forward, especially considering that starting in 2025, the franchise is set to release only one live-action series per year. Such a shift may significantly limit opportunities for the platform to achieve sustained success annually. This dependency highlights the enduring legacy and cultural significance of Star Wars, yet it also raises concerns about future content availability.

Assessing Star Wars Viewership in 2024

A Closer Look at Performance

Skeleton Crew Episode 6 - The Kids Stranded on Lapuna

Despite the seemingly successful performance of Star Wars properties, this top 10 ranking highlights a troubling trend: the overall standards for Disney+ have significantly decreased. In an exclusive discussion with ScreenRant, Luminate revealed that viewership for the platform was alarmingly low during 2024, particularly illustrated by The Acolyte.

According to expert analysis, “The Acolyte could be considered the first genuinely underperforming entry relative to previous Star Wars shows, ”noted Doyle. He emphasized that viewership was 47% lower than that of Ahsoka during the first 26 weeks of its release. This statistic is especially worrisome, given that Ahsoka performed decently within the audience. Nonetheless, Doyle pointed out that The Acolyte still ranks among Disney+’s biggest shows this year, albeit at a disappointing level compared to typical Star Wars standards. The main issue for The Acolyte stemmed from production costs that far exceeded its viewership.

As mentioned by Thomas Bacon, while most Star Wars shows have fared reasonably well, they merely skim the surface of past performance metrics. Though The Bad Batch is somewhat insulated due to its animated format—where expectations differ from live-action—the overall performance of The Acolyte and Skeleton Crew has not met previous benchmarks. Thus, while Star Wars remains a foundational element for Disney+, this situation invokes both excitement and anxiety about future releases.

Source: Luminate

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