Ever since Alien: Earth made its world premiere back in August, the series has been steadily climbing the streaming charts. Each new episode, which premiered weekly on FX and Hulu simultaneously, saw the series continue to grow in popularity. With the show’s season finale arriving this week, it was only natural that the series would take the top TV streaming slot on Disney+ (which combines its content with Hulu). Just one day later, though, Alien: Earth has been overrun like a xenomorph hive by another new series. When looking at the data, though, it points toward a surprising new #1 series on streaming.
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According to FlixPatrol‘s data charts, Alien: Earth has been pushed out of the #1 spot on Disney+ by none other than Marvel’s latest series, Marvel Zombies. That series, an animated show that spins out of the events of Marvel’s What If…?, marks a major departure for Marvel Studios as it delivers a TV-MA series full of gore and brutal death scenes with the Avengers. That said, the numbers themselves reveal that Marvel Zombies might be a full-fledged hit.
How Marvel Zombies Was Able to Beat Alien: Earth in the Streaming Charts
According to the charts provided by Flix Patrol, which are based on the average rankings for a series in the Top 10 charts for every country where it’s available, Marvel Zombies has a score of 723, which it achieved by being the #2 piece of content on Disney+ on average in many territories. Alien: Earth, on the other hand, has a score of 429, which was done by being the #5 piece of content on average.
There are a couple of factors that led Marvel Zombies to secure the top streaming spot from Alien: Earth on Disney+. The big one is, of course, that the brand of a new Marvel series immediately makes it a must-watch for fans of the larger franchise. Couple that with the interest in something immediately different from anything else in the larger MCU, and you get a series that will have audiences interested.
On top of that, there is another factor that makes it clear why Marvel Zombies would become the #1 show: the release strategy. Alien: Earth was debuting new episodes weekly, meaning most audiences were likely keeping up with each new hour as it premiered. As a result, the viewership for Alien: Earth was almost certainly based on audiences watching one episode at a time. Adjacent to that release strategy, of course, is that Marvel Zombies dropped all of its episodes at once, prompting viewers to likely binge the entire thing for fear of spoilers.
What makes Marvel Zombies’ dethroning of Alien: Earth so surprising is simple: it has half the number of episodes as the Hulu sci-fi series (Alien: Earth has eight total, with Marvel Zombies only releasing four). Not to mention, in addition to a skewed episode count, Alien: Earth‘s episodes are even longer than any of Marvel Zombies‘. As a result, it seems like viewers are perhaps gravitating toward Marvel Zombies and watching the entire thing in one sitting, while Alien: Earth may very well be a show that is being consumed piecemeal, with viewers digesting episodes as they watch before going back for more.
With the season finale of Alien: Earth having arrived this week, the potential for newcomers to start binging the entire thing is certainly there, but it’s also likely that some audience members were waiting for the weekend to watch the finale. The same can also be said for Marvel Zombies, though, especially as both shows set up another batch of episodes down the line. As the weeks carry on, it will be interesting to see which comes out on top.
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