Streaming Wars • December 2021
Hawkeye and Wheel of Time Eye Top Spots as Overlooked 2021 Series Mount an End-of-Year Comeback
Loki managed to hold its #1 spot for yet another month of 2021, but it came perilously close to losing it to Hawkeye, the new MCU kid on the block. Despite this, Disney+’s overall numbers are stagnating, suggesting that Marvel’s impact on the streamer’s subscriber base has hit its ceiling. Meanwhile, Amazon’s Wheel of Time is breathing down the neck of top 2021 performers like The Falcon and the Winter Soldier and Squid Game. Big moves were made by The Underground Railroad, Tell Me Your Secrets, and Superman & Lois, three underrated series that premiered earlier in 2021, but seem to be getting an end-of-year bump.
Photo: Loki, Disney+
Hawkeye Consolidates MCU’s Rule Over 2021, Yet Disney+ Remains Far From Dominant
With Hawkeye in the mix, the MCU’s Disney+ offerings now account for four of the Top 5 shows on the Watchworthy leaderboard in December — this despite the fact that three of those four shows didn’t premiere in the last six months. With the box office numbers for Black Widow and Eternals calling Marvel’s supremacy on the big screen into question, these figures can leave us little doubt that the entertainment superpower has had zero trouble conquering the small screen.
But this positive note for Marvel comes with a more worrying one for Disney+. The streamer’s overall share of Engagement actually went down from November to December, despite the incredible performance of its four main titles. It could mean that Marvel shows, as popular as they are, are limited in encouraging subscriptions, and the platform will have to expand and deepen its content library if it wants to grow.
Photo: Wheel of Time, Amazon Prime
At Amazon, All Eyes on Wheel of Time
Moving from #9 in November to #6 in December, Wheel of Time is steadily moving in the right direction. With so many streamers fighting to host the next Game of Thrones, Wheel of Time could be a tremendous victory for Amazon, which hasn’t had a real game-changer of a series since The Boys premiered in 2018. A lot depends on what happens in January, when Wheel of Time will prove to either be a phenomenon with staying power or yet another flavor of the month.
Photo: Yellowjackets, Showtime
With Yellowjackets, Showtime Takes Another Step Toward Becoming a Streaming Behemoth
As a cable network, it’s been easy to forget the role played by Showtime in the Streaming Wars in the past, but the service has been fighting hard to change that. Yellowjackets is earning lots of critical buzz, and its debut at #17 on the leaderboards could represent the beginning of a burgeoning audience. With Dexter: New Blood on the board for the second consecutive month, Showtime appears more frequently on the Top 20 than Peacock, Apple TV+, Paramount+, and even Hulu.
Photo: The Underground Railroad, Amazon Prime
Overlooked Series Get End-of-Year Bump
The Underground Railroad, an amazing fantasy historical drama on Amazon, debuted on the leaderboards at #40 when it first premiered in May — now, seven months later, it’s cracked the Top 10. There’s a similar phenomenon happening with the thriller drama Tell Me Your Secrets, which premiered in February, but has been steadily climbing the leaderboards since October, ending up at #8 in December. These changes could be the result of end-of-year wrap-ups coming out, encouraging viewers to check out shows from earlier in the year that might have otherwise been overlooked.
Our Methodology
In 30 seconds, our Watchworthy recommendation app learns your taste in TV and gives every show a “Worthy Score” specifically for you: the higher a given show’s Worthy Score, the more likely it is you will enjoy that show. Each month we track user engagement across thousands of series for every major streaming service. All of these signals are combined into a single metric called Watchworthy Engagement. This enables Ranker to determine which service’s content has the highest engagement — in other words, the streaming platforms who are winning the Streaming Wars.
The Top 20 shows measures which new series (premiered two years ago or later) are garnering the most Engagement from our users month to month. The most Watchworthy platform measures Engagement across all TV shows, new and old, and aggregates them according to the platform they stream on.
