Netflix shrugs off Avatar and Beef losing over 55% of their season 2 audience

Right, so Netflix has had a rough run with a bunch of high-profile shows taking a nosedive in viewership when their second seasons dropped. If you go by just the opening week numbers, there are some pretty ugly dips here — we're talking more than half the audience gone in some cases, which is the kind of stat that usually has streamer execs reaching for a stress ball. Here’s the thing, though: Netflix execs aren’t sweating it. Or at least, that’s what they're saying with a straight face.

Second Season Slump? Not Bothered, Apparently

Jinny Howe, who’s running the scripted show for Netflix in the US and Canada, spoke up about these hefty drops. She claims it’s not the blaring alarm it looks like on paper. She specifically called out that people are a bit too obsessed with reading into 'sophomore slumps', and that Netflix isn’t 'overly concerned or focused on' those big first-week viewer losses. Now, you'd think losing over 55% of your opening week audience might cause a bit of panic in the boardroom, but Howe’s pushing back on that idea.

To back her up, she pointed to hits like Bridgerton, which apparently got even bigger past the first go-round. Basically: don’t judge everything off the first week, it’s all a bit more complicated.

Who’s Actually Dropping Off?

Just so we’re clear, here are the biggest offenders when it comes to season two drop-offs:

• Avatar: The Last Airbender
• The Four Seasons
• A Good Girl’s Guide
• Beef
• A Man On the Inside
• Running Point (only down 43% - which, let’s be honest, still isn’t great)

All of them saw more than half their opening week audience vanish compared to the previous season. In industry terms, that’s what you’d call a brutal slump.

Netflix Looking at the 'Long Game'

Here’s where it gets interesting, though: Netflix insists that these launch week stats don’t tell the whole story. They’re much keener on what happens after that initial hype dies down. That means looking at how old episodes get a bump when a new season arrives (the classic “catch-up binge”), plus the slow-burn viewership — or, as they call it, the long tail.

They used Stranger Things as the big example: even without any new episodes, its older seasons pulled in more than 70 million views a year across 2023 and 2024. It’s not exactly most shows, that one, but you can see their point.

Renewals and the Outliers

And here’s what’s actually happening with all those shows that dropped off: most of them have already been renewed for third seasons. So even with the drop, Netflix isn’t bailing out. Clearly, they’re banking on either a bounce-back or just seeing steady engagement over the long haul.

There are exceptions, mainly shows with a bit of romance — Bridgerton, Virgin River, Emily in Paris, and Nobody Wants This all managed to stay pretty steady, with much gentler drops between seasons. Maybe love really does conquer all, at least in streaming charts.

How Big Was the Bridgerton Season 4 Launch?

Netflix hasn’t coughed up a full stats rundown for Bridgerton Season 4, but according to the weekly Top 10 charts, it managed 97.3 million views in its first 91 days — not exactly a flop, then.

'It’s not necessarily something that we understand to be true of our shows,' Howe said, pushing back on the idea that a slow season 2 start is always a disaster.

For what it’s worth, the streamer’s clearly decided premiere week is just a piece of the puzzle, not the whole story.