Variety Calls Amazon’s The Rings of Power Season 2 Premiere A “Soft Start” As Luminate Reveals Underwhelming Number Of Minutes Watched

As additional information about Amazon’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power season 2 premiere’s performance trickles its way to the public, the picture being painted isn’t very encouraging for the fantasy show. Prior to Variety’s report, Samba TV stated that The Rings of Power season 2 episode 1 saw a 50% drop in viewership compared to season 1’s first episode. According to Luminate, a data and analytics company, Amazon’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power season 2 premiere saw 553.5 million minutes watched during its opening week which Variety described as a “soft start.”

Following in a similar vein as Samba TV, The Rings of Power season 1’s premiere saw a higher number in a shorter amount of time with 1.2 billion minutes watched within four days, according to Luminate’s analytics. Add to the fact that Season 1 only premiered the first two episodes (132 minutes combined runtime) compared to Season 2’s three-episode premiere (204 minutes combined runtime) and the impact of Season 2’s premiere is looking to be far more lackluster than fans of the show might have hoped.

Unfortunately, Variety didn’t post any viewership numbers to go along with the minutes watched for the show but also added that, leading up to the season 2 release, there was renewed interest in Rings of Power season 1, prior to season 2’s release, with 229.2 million minutes watched. However, if we were to take the total minutes watched and divide it by the total premiere runtime, than there was an estimated 2.7 million viewers but take into account that this doesn’t take into consideration viewers who didn’t watch the entire premiere.

While a drop in viewership for season 2 is to be expected for any show, the percentages are not very promising for Amazon’s expensive adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth, though not too surprising given the lackluster response to The Rings of Power promotions leading up to season 2’s debut. 

So far Amazon has been quiet regarding any statistics related to The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power while Nielsen Ratings isn’t expected to report their findings until September.

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