Image: Saturday Night Live, NBC
For the week of March 28 – April 3, Spongebob Squarepants held onto the #1 spot in our US demand ranking. With 66.3 times the demand of the average series, demand for the perennially popular cartoon was virtually unchanged from last week.
Attack on Titan released the final episode of Season 4, Part 1 on March 29th. Despite its mid-season conclusion, its demand held steady and it was not able to move into the top spot. However, as the English version of each episode is released on a delayed timeframe, this show may see a delayed spike in demand in the US.
Maya Rudolph hosted Saturday Night Live on March 27th. As an alum of the show she naturally drew existing fans of the long-running series to watch this week’s episode. We’ve previously shown episodes are especially in-demand when alums of the show host.
The Walking Dead had a surprising drop in demand this week. Its season 10 finale aired on April 4th so will be reflected in next week’s data. However, the 8% drop in demand the week going into the season finale shows how the show has struggled to keep momentum for this season. This season was originally scheduled to conclude in April 2020 but COVID production delays pushed that out a year. This week’s low demand could also be due to the surprisingly negative critical reception of the penultimate episode, whose Rotten Tomatoes score was significantly lower than all other episodes this season.
The Falcon and the Winter Soldier entered the top 10 overall ranking this week as it released its 3rd episode on April 2nd.
While The Falcon and the Winter Soldier made it into the top 10 overall series and shot up the digital original chart to the # 2 spot, it still did not manage to unseat WandaVision. In fact is following a similar trajectory to WandaVision, which shot up the ranking but did not take the top spot from The Mandalorian for several weeks. TFATWS also mirrors WandaVision in that it became the most in-demand show in the world, before reaching the top spot in the US ranking.
Demand for Lucifer jumped by 16% this week. This follows the confirmation of the Season 5, Part 2 release date, which will land on May 28th. In addition to confirming the release date of the last part of Season 5, cast and crew of the show wrapped up production on the final season and shared many fond memories of the past 6 years.
The Witcher moved up one place in the digital original ranking for the week. Demand for the show was up by 9% this week as it was confirmed that production on Season 2 had finished. While Disney+ has lately dominated the digital originals rankings with its mega-hits, it looks like Netflix is poised to release new episodes of some of its most enduringly popular shows.
