Summary
- In the same week, Disney+ aired the Ahsoka finale and the Loki Season 2 premiere.
- For all their reliance on franchises, Disney still doesn't seem to understand how people use streaming services.
- Viewers want to other Star Wars series featuring Ahsoka's characters, rather than jump to another franchise series.
Over the span of two days, Disney+ debuted the finale of the first (and possibly only) season of Ahsoka and the premiere of the second season of Loki. This release schedule shows that Disney+ still doesn't understand streaming audiences and how they use the service versus how the company wants them to use it. Instead of building on Ahsoka's momentum and highlighting shows and films already on the service, Disney+ viewers are expected to jump to a different, high-concept sprawling saga.
Streaming presents a conundrum for studios, beyond their unwillingness to pay artists fairly leading to the resolved WGA strike and ongoing SAG-AFTRA labor action. In 2019, streaming was all-the-rage, and studios envisioned a world where they got all the audience's money. In 2023, with box offices still inconsistent as people navigate the post-pandemic economy, studios realized they intentionally blew up their very successful business model. On traditional television, it would make sense for the start of Loki Season 2 to follow the end of Ahsoka. High ratings for series that live in the zeitgeist meant high revenues from advertisers. Also, digital video recording aside, audiences have to watch shows on traditional television when they air. Streaming, however, is a different animal. People can take their time to get to shows, often preferring to "binge" a season. This doesn't prevent studios from still looking at debut viewership numbers like traditional ratings, even though it's not how their customers use their services.
Ahsoka Sparked Interest In Star Wars Shows Adult Fans Never Saw
Ahsoka directly follows Star Wars: Rebels characters after that adventure ended, even including a scene from the series finale. While fans didn't need to watch Rebels to enjoy Ahsoka, the momentum following that series likely led plenty of people to the animated series who might not have seen them before. One thing streaming does provide for audiences is a repository of these ongoing sagas, where they can watch at their leisure. Fans curious about who Ezra Bridger is and how he's connected to Sabine Wren and Ahsoka Tano could turn to Rebels to for those answers.
Meanwhile, it's been over two years since credits rolled on the Loki Season 1 finale. Since then, the Marvel Cinematic Universe has released over a dozen new movies and shows. Even the most hardcore MCU fan would need to revisit these stories, even if it's just Loki Season 1 and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, featuring Kang as the villain. Fans of both Star Wars and the MCU could be overwhelmed by the back-to-back releases. Instead of reveling in two new great stories, they might skip one or both as they go back through more familiar entries.
Disney said Ahsoka received millions of views during its initial run. Audiences might want to rewatch the series or, for completionists, revisit Ahsoka Tano's entire arc from The Clone Wars through Rebels, and into the live-action series. However, if they do this instead of flocking to Loki, Disney will look at the former as a success and the latter as a failure. To the audiences, however, Loki isn't going anywhere while they are in the mood for stories from a galaxy (or galaxies) far, far away.
Disney Didn't Give Audiences Time to Reacquaint Themselves With Loki's Characters
Disney+ is still a "small" enough streaming service that it doesn't need to have multiple new releases at one time, like Netflix or Prime Video. A single new release can be enough for audiences to justify the price of a subscription, especially since the entirety of the Star Wars or Marvel universes are just a click away. The best thing for audiences to do would be to reacquaint themselves with Loki's journey in the MCU, from Thor through Avengers: Endgame and beyond before settling down for Season 2.
With Ahsoka, there are fans who enjoy the live action series but never watched the cartoons. The end of the series could inspire Star Wars fans to want "more," whether it's a special playlist of episodes of The Clone Wars and Rebels or just the whole series. Instead of Loki, Disney+ could've followed Ahsoka with their Disney Gallery making-of series, to give fans a behind-the-scenes look like they did with the short video released after the episode where Ahsoka and Anakin reunite. Either way, Disney+ audiences tuning in for Ahsoka want more Star Wars stories not to jump over to the MCU.
Similarly, the Disney+ audience who isn't there for Star Wars can explore and revisit the films and series released in recent years. Perhaps part of the reason the MCU seems to be waning in popularity is because of the rate of release. Fans haven't had time to rewatch the new offerings as much they rewatched old favorites. Instead, series like What If…? or others tangentially related to Loki are forgotten in favor of the newest, hottest release. Streaming service audiences aren't traditional television audiences, and Disney should stop programming their releases like they were.
With Ahsoka and Loki Disney Shows a Lack of Strategy and Patience
Streaming is far more successful than the industry would have folks believe. While building these services is a costly endeavor, it does pay off. Even at the lowest pricing tier, with over 146 million subscribers Disney+ is bringing in more than $1 billion in revenue each month. However, because their margins aren't immediately profitable, and the box office is sluggish in its return to pre-pandemic heights, the bean-counters are panicking.
If a series doesn't immediately perform well in viewership metrics, it's deemed a failure, when the audience simply hasn't found it yet. People who don't want to wait week-to-week to find out what happens to Loki, Mobius and the TVA may just dive into Star Wars: Rebels instead. They can get more information about the characters in Ahsoka and, when its over, turn their attention to a different fantasy universe. The way Disney+ releases series almost seems designed to rob shows of their momentum rather than build on it.
Streaming is still a relatively new entertainment development, especially for the audience. To them, it doesn't matter if they do an early MCU rewatch or follow the latest shows each week. These series live or die based on that immediate viewership, which suggests nearly four years into its existence Disney+ executives still don't understand what people want from their service or how they use it.