According to the latest streaming viewership stats, the first two episodes of Marvel’s Hawkeye trail Loki viewership rates by a staggering 40 percent. The show premiered on Disney+ on November 24th, and sees Jeremy Renner returning as the titular hero. Hawkeye also introduces Kate Bishop (Hailee Steinfeld) to the MCU, and sees both Clint and Kate going face-to-face with the notorious tracksuit mafia as Clint struggles to leave his violent past behind him.
So far, Hawkeye has received overwhelmingly positive reviews from both fans and critics, with the show currently standing at a 94 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes. It’s been an undeniably big year for Marvel, as the studio has released multiple movies and Disney+ TV shows as part of the MCU’s Phase 4. Hawkeye comes on the heels of series like WandaVision, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Loki, and Marvel’s What If…?, which all debuted in 2020-2021 alone. It remains to be seen how Hawkeye will hold up to the rest of the shows ratings-wise as episodes continue to roll out, but critics have cited the on-screen chemistry between Steinfeld and Renner as a huge factor in their positive reviews.
Despite the praise surrounding Hawkeye‘s first two episodes, the show’s viewership ratings are dramatically lagging behind this year’s earlier MCU releases. According to the latest streaming viewership stats from Samba TV (reported by Deadline), which measures 3 million U.S. households, the first episode number trails the 5-day U.S. household viewership figure for Loki by -40%. Hawkeye‘s 5-day is also lagging behind the 3-day premieres of Falcon and the Winter Solider, which received 1.8 million views, and WandaVision, which earned 1.6 million views.
Hawkeye‘s comparatively low viewing figures are surprising, considering Clint is one of the few original Avengers left. For such a recognizable character, it’s interesting that Hawkeye reported significantly less viewership compared to other MCU shows, which flaunted equally-recognizable characters like Loki, Sam Wilson, and Wanda Maximoff. However, the stakes in Loki‘s multiverse-shattering storyline are, seemingly, much higher than Kate and Clint’s holiday romp in Hawkeye, though there’s clearly plenty of room for things to go sour. It’ll be interesting to see if future storylines and a rumored, not-so-rumored Yelena Belova appearance will help to increase the show’s viewership.
Clearly, Hawkeye didn’t smash the numbers put up by Loki like Marvel execs probably wanted, but 1.5 million households is still an impressive number. The show’s premiere also happened to coincide with the Thanksgiving holiday, meaning it could have easily lost some viewers to NFL football or other holiday-specific programming. Fans of the show still have four more episodes to look forward to, which will air Wednesdays on Disney+. For now, it will be a test of the show’s quality to see if fans come back for new episodes of Hawkeye, and if the series can recover its viewership numbers before the season 1 finale.
