Why Lower Ratings For ‘Ms. Marvel’ Means Bigger Problems For Disney+

I found the first episode of Ms. Marvel to be a borderline diabolical psyop on Disney’s part, making MCU fandom, and by proxy Disney fandom, a form of cool teen rebellion. That was less a criticism than a “brilliant and possibly evil” meta-commentary. My eventual issue with Bisha K. Ali’s (mostly enjoyable) show was that its entire first season was a glorified pilot (including a mid-season digression detailing the Partition). Do you want fully formed, superheroic Kamala Khan (Iman Vellani) in her iconic costume running around Jersey and saving the day? Sorry, you’ll have to wait until a theoretical second season. The good news is that the first and last episodes (directed by Bad Boys For Life helmers Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah) were quite good. Moreover, Vellani will be as much of an added value element for future MCU projects as was Paul Rudd after the first Ant-Man. The bad news is that the ratings were subpar.

So sayeth The Entertainment Strategy Guy (who is quickly becoming a one-stop-shop for streaming data), the first episode of Ms. Marvel earned just 4.2 million hours via that week’s Nielsen ratings. That’s well below the likes of Loki (12.2 million households), The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (8.3 million) and Hawkeye (7.1 million) and Moon Knight (7 million). It failed to make the Nielsen top ten among streaming originals last week, earning less than 339 million hours viewed on the week of June 13. Granted, it’s a six-episode show. It’s possible that audiences binged the six-episode season during the week of the season finale. It’s also possible that audiences may watch it at their leisure between now and when The Marvels (which teams Khan with Brie Larson’s Carol Danvers and Teyonah Parris’ Monica Rambeau) opens theatrically on June 28, 2023. However, one key reason why it didn’t skyrocket may point to a demographic challenge for the streamer.

There are plenty of valid reasons why Ms. Marvel didn’t soar to infinity and beyond in its initial weeks, and none of them are “go woke go broke” or “Marvel is doomed!” Ms. Marvel is a 99% standalone show featuring a mostly unknown superhero played by a total unknown/first-time actress. The first handful of live-action Disney+ MCU shows were glorified sequels to Avengers: Endgame, offering “What happened next?” stories for Jeremy Renner’s Clint Barton, Anthony Mackie’s Sam Wilson, Elizabeth Olsen’s Wanda Maximoff and Tom Hiddleston’s Loki. Moon Knight, a mostly standalone Egyptian adventure, was the first to feature an entirely new superhero. It wasn’t very good, but I’d argue it pulled decent ratings at least partially because of its grimdark tone and the respective star power of Oscar Isaac and Ethan Hawke (as the baddie). Ms. Marvel was the first TV-PG MCU show, structured and staged like a (high quality) Disney Channel action sitcom.

To paraphrase Divergent, what made Ms. Marvel different (a new hero played by an unknown actress in a gee-whiz adventure teen girl-centric family dramedy) made it “dangerous.” There is a vast gulf between the viewership for the various MCU and Star Wars shows and almost everything else on Disney+. Judging by how infrequently they appear in the Nielsen top ten ratings (almost never), the likes of High School Musical The Musical The Series, The Mighty Ducks, Turner and Hooch, Big Shot and Monsters at Work aren’t burning up the overall viewership metrics. That’s not to say that the cumulative viewership for the Disney+ kid-targeted originals and gazillion older shows (everything from Alias to Jessie to Gargoyles) isn’t good enough. Still, the service seems to be primarily for Star Wars and Marvel shows, theatrical Disney animated films and/or as a metaphorical babysitting service. To paraphrase Hannah Montana, Ms. Marvel may represent the “worst of both worlds.”

Quality aside, it thus far implies that a youth-skewing show which otherwise would play under the radar if not for its existence within the MCU will only get so much of a bump from that Marvel Cinematic Universe label. Sans the online discourse that presumes that even otherwise indifferent adults will happily devour a Disney+ family comedy centered on a teenage girl just because it exists within the MCU, there’s little reason to have expected older kids and adults to be jazzed for the show. That’s fine, up to a point. It’s a kids show that, in a sane world, wouldn’t be expected to pull older demographics. However, Disney+ is arguably being held up by Marvel and Star Wars. It’s not great that the first MCU show that’s A) entirely banking on its existence within the MCU and B) is aimed more at kids is playing that much closer to a Disney+ kid-targeted original.

Beyond the above-noted kid-skewing factors, Ms. Marvel may represent the new normal for MCU shows that aren’t A) centered upon legacy characters and B) aren’t glorified sequels to the existing MCU movies. Will Tatiana Maslany’s She-Hulk: Attorney at Law play likewise even with Mark Ruffalo’s Bruce Banner lending support? Will bringing back Charlie Cox’s Daredevil and Vincent D’Onofrio’s Kingpin give Alaqua Cox’s Echo (a spin-off from Jeremy Renner and Hailee Steinfeld’s Hawkeye) a boost among the otherwise indifferent? Will big announcements from this month’s San Diego Comic Book Convention make the lower-profile Disney+ shows into “gotta watch them eventually” events? Maybe, probably and hopefully. However, Disney+ is currently being held up by its Lucasfilm shows, its MCU output and its “was supposed to be in theaters” Disney animated films. Everything else has either not broken out or outright underwhelmed. If even its MCU shows begin to pull ratings closer to “everything else,” that’s a problem with “everything else.”