Cr. Robert Falconer/Netflix © 2024
Avatar: The Last Airbender just debuted on Netflix, and given that we’re currently awaiting a season 2 announcement, everything will come down to its viewing stats over the next few weeks. How well is the show performing so far? Let’s dive in!
Last week, I posted a poll on my personal Twitter asking the general public how many viewing hours the show would get in week 1. It was a tight race, with over 200M viewing hours coming first with 30.6% of the vote, 100-150M hours in second at 29.8% of the vote, and then 151-200M and less than 100M rounding out the results with 21.9% and 17.8% respectively.
So, how well did the show do in week 1? Avatar: The Last Airbender picked up 153.40M hours watched in its first four days. That equates to 21.2M views in its first four days, debuting as the number 1 English language TV series.
Per Netflix, here’s how they describe the results for week 1:
“After just four days, Avatar: The Last Airbender is an “immediate sensation.” The series debuted atop the English TV List with 21.2M views and reached the Top 10 in 92 countries.”
Picture: Netflix
Let’s take a look at how that stacks up with the views (what we call completed viewing equivalents – hours watched divided by runtime) metrics compared to other Netflix Original scripted series released on a Thursday (which is the vast majority of the biggest US titles):
First 4 days on Netflix CVE
| Title | Views (M) |
|---|---|
| Queen Charlotte | 22.9 |
| Avatar: The Last Airbender | 21.2 |
| The Night Agent | 20.6 |
| One Piece | 18.5 |
| Obsession | 15.8 |
| XO, Kitty | 15.3 |
| FUBAR | 12.5 |
| That 90s Show | 10.6 |
| All The Light We Cannot See | 9.8 |
| Virgin River S5 | 9 |
| The Diplomat | 8.6 |
| My Life with the Walter Boys | 7.5 |
| Painkiller | 7.2 |
| Obliterated | 7 |
| Fall of the House of Usher | 6.3 |
| Beef | 5.9 |
| Top Boy S3 | 5.6 |
| Bodies | 5.5 |
| Florida Man | 4.9 |
| Survival of the Thickest | 3.7 |
| Unstable | 3.6 |
| Glmaorous | 2.3 |
| Freeridge | 2.3 |
Hours Comparison To ONE PIECE and Cowboby Bebop
Let’s compare the hours watched to a few other previous Netflix adaptations. Note that we’re not using Netflix’s views metric for this one, but rather just the raw viewing hours. So this doesn’t consider runtime, which is different between shows and not a perfect comparison.
Cowboy Bebop is one of the most high-profile casualties of Netflix’s library in recent years. After a big run-up to release, the series underperformed, unlike anything we’d seen before, picking up 15.26M hours watched in week one and struggling to get much more in the following weeks.
In contrast, ONE PIECE put in enormous numbers for Netflix in week 1, with 140.1M hours watched, equating to 18.5M views.
We’ve also included The Sandman and Resident Evil in this list. Both shows had different fates. Resident Evil, which had a strong debut but lagged in later weeks, is a cautionary tale of looking too much into week 1 figures as the show dropped dramatically in the following weeks and was canceled. The Sandman didn’t debut with fantastic numbers but grew in week two and dropped steadily.
With all that in mind, here’s how Avatar: The Last Airbender stacks up:
| Title | Hours Watched (M) |
|---|---|
| Avatar: The Last Airbender | 153.4 |
| ONE PIECE | 140.1 |
| Resident Evil | 72.67 |
| The Sandman | 69.48 |
| Shadow and Bone | 50.40 |
| Cowboy Bebop | 15.26 |
FlixPatrol Data on Avatar: The Last Airbender So Far
FlixPatrol, which measures the daily Netflix top 10s, is hard to use as a measurement gauge just yet and will really come into play in the next few weeks. Per their data, the show is still number 1 in 79 countries out of the 93 they track as of February 27th. A few notable exceptions include some Spanish-speaking regions where Wrong Side of the Tracks and Alpha Males are currently outpacing it. In the UK, Can I Tell You A Secret? and One Day are currently tracking a little better.
TelevisionStats.com, which tracks external sources like Wikipedia, Reddit, Twitter, Torrents, and IMDb, says the show has been the number 1 trending title since February 22nd.
What did you think about Avatar: The Last Airbender, and how do you rate its performance thus far? Let us know in the comments.