TV Ratings: Netflix’s ‘The Witcher’ Drew 2.2 Billion Viewing Minutes During Season 2’s Debut Week

Mónica Marie Zorrilla
·2 min read
  • Oops!
    Something went wrong.
    Please try again later.

Starving for “Witcher” content after nearly two years of pent-up anticipation, audiences went hard for the Henry Cavill-fronted adult fantasy drama series during Season 2’s opening weekend on Netflix. The title soared up Nielsen’s Top 10 SVOD ratings charts from Dec. 13-19, hitting 2.2 billion viewing minutes in its first week on the streamer.

The fantasy series bug — long-thought dead after the final season of “Game of Thrones” — has come back in full force for “The Witcher,” which topped both the overall and original programming lists, as well as for “The Wheel of Time” on Amazon Prime. Although the show aired on Nov. 19, it wound up at No. 10 overall after being on its respective platform for a full month. Together, a third of the audience for “The Witcher” and “The Wheel of Time” comes from the 35-49 age demo. The Netflix show’s other viewers leaned younger (18-34), while the Amazon Prime show leaned older (50-64). “The Wheel of Time” amassed 467 million viewing minutes.

More from Variety

Other shows with fantastical elements that made Nielsen’s SVOD Top 10s the week of Dec. 13-19 include Disney Plus’ “Hawkeye” (580MM), as well as Netflix’s “Lost in Space” (569MM), “Jurassic World Camp Cretaceous” (215MM) and “Supernatural” (353MM). Like the week prior, Christmas films on Netflix were highly popular, as evidenced in the movies category Netflix’s top two movie titles — “The Unforgivable” and “Back To The Outback” — scored the first two slots in movies.

“Selling Tampa,” which also opened the weekend of Dec. 13, drew 243 million viewing minutes, and had the highest concentration of Black households tuning in (43%) across any of the other titles this particular week.

Best of Variety

Sign up for Variety’s Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.