The Rings of Power Season 2 Viewership Numbers Are Either Great or Worrying
The Rings of Power is the Schrödinger's cat of streaming TV ratings - doing both terribly and wonderfully at the same time.
Just like its first season, season 2 of The Rings of Power hasn’t been without controversy. There are still the usual suspects crying “woke” at the show’s diverse cast, with others claiming that it is desecrating Tolkien’s work. But perhaps one of the most confusing discussions surrounding this season of the Prime Video series is how many people are actually watching it.
According to data from the third party site Samba TV (via Deadline), viewing numbers for The Rings of Power season 2 are down pretty significantly from season 1. A reported 902,000 U.S. viewers tuned in to the season 2 premiere compared to the 1.8 million U.S. households that tuned in to the season 1 premiere in 2022.
This drop in viewers isn’t a huge surprise considering that only 37 percent of subscribers who started season 1 of the series finished it, according to a 2023 article from The Hollywood Reporter. Overseas, reportedly only 45 percent of subscribers finished season 1.
These numbers aren’t a great look for the show’s second season. However, according to Amazon (via TVLine), the second season is a “Top 5 all-time Prime Video season” with 40 million viewers having watched season 2 thus far. The show is also currently number 1 on Prime Video globally, and has been in the 11 days since the season premiere. But Prime Video doesn’t specify what constitutes a “watch.” Netflix, for example, tends to determine viewership data by number of minutes watched compared to the runtime.
In a memo to her team, Jennifer Salke, head of Amazon MGM Studios, said that “We’ve also observed that tens of millions of viewers have watched S1 since early August. We’ve seen an impressive amount of our Rings of Power customers coming from outside of the U.S., which is a testament to the show’s resonance with global audiences and the remarkable growth of Prime Video customers worldwide.”
Of course Amazon isn’t going to admit that this streaming series, which could potentially cost $1 billion to make over the course of the series’ planned five-season run, isn’t doing as well as anticipated. But at the same time, if Amazon’s numbers are accurate, then it doesn’t seem like The Rings of Power is doing as catastrophically poorly as viewers have been led to believe.
And then there’s the bigger question of “does this even matter?” To certain members of the Lord of the Rings fanbase, this data could constitute a huge win. To them, it means that the show is failing because of its diverse casting or whatever other thing they’ve decided to be mad about this week. To other fans, these numbers are inconsequential. They’re going to watch the show for as long as they want to, whether other people are tuning in or not, just because they want to spend more time with these characters in this world.
The viewership argument around The Rings of Power season 2 is a mess, and it doesn’t seem like most fans or casual viewers truly care about it. People who don’t watch TV for a living or aren’t chronically online are going to watch things when they want to and have time to, which streaming services (and the industry as a whole) need to realize isn’t always going to be in the first 24 hours after something is released. Like many other Rings of Power fans, I just want to watch my orc fights and Hot Sauron in peace, and not care whether or not millions of other people are watching the same thing that I am.
Without any kind of uniformity in how streaming views are counted, these numbers don’t really have any meaningful value in the grand scheme of things. It’s almost pointless to compare how shows across streaming services are doing because they don’t all count viewership the same, nor do many of them make their numbers public. We have to rely on third parties to aggregate that data, which leaves even more room for discrepancies as numbers get thrown around.
The WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes in 2023 fought for more transparency with this type of data from streaming services, advocating for more equitable residual payouts and for creatives to have a better idea of how their projects were actually performing. The guilds were successful in only getting studios to agree to share their data with the creatives. Any data shared with the guilds is subject to a confidentiality agreement, which still leaves the majority of control over this data in the hands of the streaming services themselves.
Netflix has been known to cancel shows that do comparatively well but don’t generate huge viewership numbers, and there’s been a lot of discourse surrounding viewership numbers and the cancellation of The Acolyte by Disney+ and Lucasfilm. But it doesn’t sound like canceling The Rings of Power is even something that Prime Video is considering. Amazon is a trillion-dollar company that’s already invested hundreds of millions into this, they’re going to do whatever they want. In fact, sources told THR this week that “the company remains committed to the show’s original five-season plan.”
The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is streaming now on Prime Video.
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Brynna Arens (she/her) is a freelance writer who studies movies, TV, and pop culture through an intersectional feminist lens. She'll watch almost anything tbh, but it's…