By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
The Marvel Cinematic Universe is filled with colorful supervillains, but no matter how strong these foes are, our heroes always come out on top. The same can’t be said for the MCU as a whole, though. After the blockbuster success of Avengers: Endgame, Disney+ introduced a firehose of content in the form of one new show after another. This ushered in the one villain the MCU itself could never defeat: superhero fatigue. Revenues went down, some ventures lost money, and fans and execs alike were left asking the same question: Is Marvel ever going to be as popular as it once was?
Last year, there was a glimmer of hope. Daredevil: Born Again brought the fan-favorite Netflix hero back for brand new adventures where he once again clashed with the Kingpin. Hopes rallied around this new show, and Marvel Studios decided to use its second season as a launchpad to bring other beloved characters (like Jessica Jones) back into the fold. Sadly, the comeback has already failed: despite all the hype and all the hope, viewership for Daredevil: Born Again has dropped by more than 50 percent.
It’s Over, Fam
This news comes to us from ComicBook.com. They trawled through Luminate data and discovered some sobering numbers. In its first five weeks, Daredevil: Born Again Season 2 had “4,515,000 season views, 10,867,000 hours watched, and 652,000,000 minutes watched.” That may sound good on paper, but as it turns out, Season 1 had “8,357,000 season views, 24,000,000 hours watched, and 1,440,004,000 minutes watched.” That means that the second season of this hit show had 46 percent fewer total viewers and a decline of more than 54 percent in total hours watched.
The pattern is very consistent, with every episode of Season 2 getting about half of the fan engagement as each corresponding Season 1 episode. That leads to the obvious question: why the sudden drop? Based on other metrics, it doesn’t seem like this is a reaction to fans hating Season 1. That premiere season of Daredevil: Born Again has an 87 percent critical score on Rotten Tomatoes; meanwhile, Season 2 has (so far) an 88 percent critical score. Interestingly, the audience score for Season 1 was 78 percent, but the audience score for Season 2 is, as of this writing, 87 percent.
Daredevil No More?
It’s normal for shows (especially hit shows) to lose some viewers from season to season as more casual fans find newer, shinier shows to glom onto. However, losing over half your audience from season to season is downright catastrophic, and it seems like a seriously bad sign for Daredevil: Born Again. As ComicBook.com points out, the second season failed to break the Nielsen Top 10 for streaming, which is something that both Ms. Marvel and She-Hulk: Attorney at Law managed to do. If Marvel’s hit new show can’t draw as many viewers as its most controversial ones, the MCU is in serious trouble!
For better or for worse, though, the show will go on. Production has already begun on Daredevil: Born Again Season 3, which will reunite the Defenders from the Netflix-era of Marvel. Meanwhile, Defender and Born Again guest star Krysten Ritter is (according to Marvel Television head Brad Winderbaum) likely going to headline a new project very soon. These future projects may very well get a boost from Avengers: Doomsday, the ambitious blockbuster that is premiering later this year. That movie is Marvel’s biggest, most expensive effort at combating superhero fatigue, and the plan to reignite the fandom is so crazy it just might work.
If it doesn’t work, though? The failure of Daredevil: Born Again Season 2 will be seen as the canary in the coal mine for the death of the most ambitious cinematic universe ever created.
