Only 37% Of Viewers Finished Amazon’s ‘Rings Of Power,’ Which Is Very Bad

THR is out with a big new report about Amazon Prime original productions, which Amazon has been throwing money at for years now, yet they arguably have yet to produce the sort of brand-defining programming that other streaming services have, despite a few hits here and there from The Boys to Jack Reacher.

A chunk of the piece centers on the Lord of the Rings’ Ring of Power series, developed mainly because Jeff Bezos wants his own Game of Thrones for the service. But despite a billion dollar spend, the report says that just 37% of viewers finished the entire series. That is…quite bad.

Amazon is trying to say otherwise. Amazon Studios chief Jennifer Salke pushes back on the idea:

“This desire to paint the show as anything less than a success — it’s not reflective of any conversation I’m having internally,” she says. She goes on to pump up the second season: “That’s a huge opportunity for us. The first season required a lot of setting up.”

Generally speaking, “the story required a lot of setting up” is not a great excuse for why something was lackluster, as “set-up” was also most of Game of Thrones season 1, leading to its explosive finale, but it was an excellent series of television all the same.

As for the 37% number, that’s bad. There’s no spinning that. Rival Netflix usually cancels most shows that come in under 50% completion. Squid Game, its megahit, had 83% completion. Sure, Netflix is in a somewhat different position, given that you can binge all their shows at once, so completion is easier. But you can turn to HBO instead if you want with its weekly airings.

The first season of Game of Thrones had more viewers by the end than it did at its finale. House of the Dragon went down a little bit by the end, but you can blame that on a larger-than-usual initial surge because of its Game of Thrones connection. Meanwhile, just last month, The Last of Us more than doubled in its initial live viewership by the end of the season.

A 37% completion rate is bad. Very bad. It signifies fading interest in the show as time went on, which is unfortunate because it did get somewhat better in later episodes compared to the more boring “set-up” of the first few.

But Amazon cannot say the show is doing badly, because they are pot-committed to this production which they have spent so much money on up front. That means a least a few more seasons likely no matter how it performs, albeit one of the main takeaways of this piece seems to be that you can’t buy your way to success. You cannot buy yourself a new Game of Thrones if the magic isn’t there (and there are many questions to be raised about Rings of Power specifically, given its trusting of the series to two extremely green showrunners).

From what I’ve seen I doubt that Rings of Power will blossom into something incredible. It may be…fine. But it’s not going to be Game of Thrones or really anywhere close. But there are no signs that Amazon spending is slowing down much, and if anyone can continue to endlessly throw money at the problem, it’s them.

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