The Mandalorian outperforms The Office in streaming numbers

The Mandalorian performed so well that it shot its way up to no. 1 on the streaming charts.

Sorry, Michael Scott. The title of World’s Best Boss should go to another man in charge thanks to strong streaming numbers last month: the Mandalorian. The Disney+ TV series named after the titular character pulled some impressive numbers during its season 2 run, and that led it to take the coveted no. 1 spot among all streaming shows.

This is according to Variety, which reported the Nielsen numbers on Thursday. This ranking covers the week of Dec. 14, 2020, which happens to be the week that the season 2 finale of The Mandalorian dropped. As the numbers go, The Mandalorian grabbed a combined total of 1,336 million minutes watched by fans that week.

Now, compare that to The Office, which came close to those numbers. The Office pulled a combined watch-time of 1,311 minutes. Yes, the numbers are very close. But The Office had 192 episodes streaming on Netflix at the time. (That was the series’ last month on Netflix). The Mandalorian, by the end of that week, only had 16 episodes total. Mathematically speaking, that’s an impressive feat to pull off — as it would indicate much more people tuned into The Mandalorian than The Office that week. (And we know there are many people who love to have The Office on in the background. So that makes it even more impressive.)

Variety also reports that this means The Mandalorian was the first non-Netflix show to finally take the top spot. Additionally, the story mentions that Disney+ and Netflix do not report detailed numbers to be able to measure something like combined watch-time stats, so we’ll have to take Nielsen’s word that their estimates are on par with the true figures.

This is also good news for Disney+ because The Mandalorian found itself on the no. 1 spot for a list that’s not-so-coveted: the most pirated TV shows. Just last week, it was reported that The Mandalorian did indeed become the most-pirated TV show of 2020, especially with the excitement around season 2. But we speculated that that title did not mean much, seeing as Disney+ well surpassed the number of subscribers they were hoping to acquire in its first year. Now, the Nielsen ratings confirm that as well, so Disney+ and The Mandalorian should have nothing to worry about.

For more Star Wars and The Mandalorian news, keep up with Dork Side of the Force!