Image: The Expanse, Amazon Prime Video
For the penultimate week of 2020, The Mandalorian managed to grow its dominant position as the most in-demand show in the US. The final episode of the season was released on December 18th. This boosted the show to be 125.8 times the demand of the average series in the US, up about 1% from last week.
Demand for Saturday Night Live was up by nearly 20% this week as the series aired its final episode before the holiday break. This week’s result was driven by the spike in demand for last week’s episode hosted by Timothee Chalamet on December 12. As data for the final episode comes in, it remains to be seen if the last episode of 2020, hosted by alum Kristen Wiig will surpass the current demand peak of the season that was reached on November 9 following the episode hosted by Dave Chappelle.
Despite being knocked down one place by Saturday Night Live this week, demand for Attack on Titan actually increased by 8.3% compared to last week. The popular anime series released the second episode of its final season this week.
Stranger Things powered up the overall rankings this week, jumping to the 7th most in-demand spot from 16th place last week. Fans of the mega-hit are getting excited for season 4, already delayed by COVID-19. Several events have fanned the flames of anticipation in the past week. David Harbour did an interview and explained why the upcoming season was his favorite yet for his character, Jim Hopper, whose fate was left in limbo at the end of Season 3. Additionally, this week fans were able to watch the cast members of the show play a real game of Dungeons & Dragons on YouTube.
Demand for Grey’s Anatomy has tapered off this week following the much talked about COVID memorial episode last week. This week’s episode concluded a crossover event that began on the show Station 19. It could be that the complexities of continuing a storyline from another series actually reduced demand for Grey’s Anatomy among its own fanbase.
Among Digital Original series, the Disney+ series The Mandalorian and Star Wars: The Clone Wars held onto the 1st and 3rd spots respectively. This may be about to change however, as The Mandalorian wraps up its second season. Netflix looks poised to challenge Disney+ for the top spots as Stranger Things leapfrogged several series this week to take the number 2 spot. Cobra Kai continues to rise in anticipation of its Season 3 release on Netflix in early January.
Both The Crown and Animaniacs have been sitting near the top of the ranking for weeks despite having released all episodes over a month ago. It appears that they are finally beginning to descend the ranks in earnest this week.
Amazon Prime Video’s The Expanse was one of the shows that saw the largest week on week increase in demand. Demand for the series increased by over 65%, making it 38.1 times more in-demand than the average series. Amazon seems to be taking a cue from The Boys release earlier this year and is releasing Season 5 episodes of The Expanse weekly. However, as with The Boys, it dropped the first 3 episodes of this season all at once on December 15. So far this season is receiving positive reviews, its scope and ambition being compared to Game of Thrones.
