When The Mandalorian Season 2 finale episode (“Chapter 16: The Rescue”) aired, Star Wars fans found themselves processing a lot of surprises. First, there was the triumphant return of Jedi Knight Luke Skywalker (CGI Mark Hamill) to the Star Wars story.
Then, during the unexpected post credits scene, The Book of Boba Fett was officially announced. The sequence saw Shand and legendary character Boba Fett (Temuera Morrison) storm Jabba the Hutt’s former palace on Tatooine, unceremoniously kill Majordomo Bib Fortuna (Michael Carter), and take Jabba’s throne for themselves.
Per an article about Nielson’s latest numbers, the premiere episode of the Mandalorian spinoff actually did better than entire seasons of Netflix shows in the same frame of time:
Nielsen’s latest report for streaming data for the week of December 27, 2021 to January 2, 2022 reveals that the show was streamed 389 million minutes in the United States. Considering the series only had one episode released at that time, and only five of the seven days of that week, this shows how popular the series was going into its premiere and it was in fact so popular it beat out full seasons of Netflix TV shows.
The report went on to note that Favreau and Filoni’s project was the “#8 original streaming show for the week of 12/27 – 1/2/22, falling behind Cobra Kai, The Witcher, Lost in Space and Hawkeye, but beating out Stay Close and The Great British Baking Show.”
Again, remember that during this window of time, The Book of Boba Fett had only been available on Disney+ for five days and had just one episode. This is why the show actually did better than entire seasons of two Netflix series, and came close to several others.
The big question now, though, is who could appear alongside Djarin as presumably goes to war on Fett’s side — the duo already teamed up in the second season of The Mandalorian, beginning in “Chapter 14: The Tragedy.”
One rumor about The Mandalorian Season 3 — which is currently filming — indicated that it will feature an epic scene with 75 Mandalorians coming alongside Djarin. Since the rumor mill is sometimes only half true, there exists the possibility that this sequence will occur in latter half of The Book of Boba Fett instead.
What do you think about the apparent popularity of Temuera Morrison’s latest entry in the Star Wars franchise?