Marvel: Falcon and Winter Soldier was Disney Plus’ most watched series debut

The Falcon and the Winter Soldier was Disney Plus‘ most-watched series premiere yet, Disney’s Marvel said Monday. The ranking, which was based on viewing from the show’s premiere Friday through Sunday, didn’t include any hard numbers for the amount of watch-time spent on The Falcon and the Winter Soldier’s first episode.

After The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Disney Plus’ next-most-watched opening weekends for original shows were WandaVision in January and the second season premiere of The Mandalorian in October. Marvel didn’t characterize which one had more viewership between the two. 

The milestone for The Falcone and the Winter Soldier is partly a function of Disney Plus’ rapidly expanding subscriber base. Popular series that debut recently are more likely to be watched by more people at their premieres than the shows that came before, when fewer people subscribed to the service. 

For example, The Mandalorian — Disney Plus‘ breakout success — had its initial series premiere the same day the service itself launched, when it went live in the US, Canada and the Netherlands only. Disney Plus‘ subscriber base was a fraction of the size then: Disney Plus had less than 29 million subscribers three months after The Mandalorian series premiere versus the more than 100 million subscribers that Disney Plus surpassed earlier this month. 

Even WandaVision, another Marvel original series, premiered just 10 weeks ago on Jan. 15 — but that was before Disney Plus launched more widely in Europe as a part Disney’s latest streaming service, Star, in late February. 

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