‘Fallout’ Season 2’s Weekly Drops May Not Be Working

The second season of Fallout came out in December, with a big switchup being its change from dropping all episodes at once to a weekly schedule. Prime Video was explicit about this change ahead of the show’s return, but two-thirds through the season, that gambit doesn’t appear to be paying off.

Per Nielsen ratings obtained by the Hollywood Reporter, the season premiere on December 16 had 794 million total minutes of watch time during the week of December 15-21, significantly down from season one’s 2.9 billion minutes when that dropped back in 2024. As THR notes, that falloff could be due to only one episode of season two dropping on premiere day. Other Prime Video shows like Mighty Nein and Reacher opened with two or three episodes.

When the first season of Fallout arrived, several viewers (us included) felt the show could’ve warranted a weekly schedule, a sentiment that seems to have reached Prime Video’s ears. Viewership numbers may not currently back up that thought, but it doesn’t mean the show’s experiment was a complete wash; it just might need to premiere seasons with more episodes or hit a sweet spot with two episodes a week. Some shows benefit from all at once, others weekly, and there’s always room for experimentation.

The good news is, we already know we’re getting a third season of Fallout, so this isn’t currently a death knell for the series. We’ll see what the big takeaway from the season’s one-per-week cadence is when the finale drops on February 4.

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