The Sopranos and, later, Breaking Bad did a wonderful thing for television: they made small-screen projects feel as though they were something you would pay ticket money to see on the big screen. The quality of the writing was far higher than what one would typically see from a television show just as the acting was better and the production values raised by a country mile. And now, a few decades later, we’re at a point where big-name IPs are expanding their lore via television shows. Sometimes these shows stick with what worked in the franchise up to that point, but the best of them go for something wildly different.

However, just as we’re in an age where streaming, not theaters, reign supreme, we’re also in a particularly nostalgia-driven place. We find comfort in familiarity and that’s frequently affected what studios strive to feed us. But Alien: Earth, Wonder Man, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, and Star Wars: Andor made for some of the best small screen viewing of 2025 and the first month of 2026. The question is, how did viewers respond to them?

How Many People Watched These Shows?

image courtesy of disney+

HBO’s House of the Dragon is different from Game of Thrones in terms of tone and is more focused on just the Targaryen family instead of multiple families, but it is still closer to its source show than A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, which has an ever more razor sharp focus on just a single character, Ser Duncan “Dunk” the Tall. There’s little doubt it hasn’t generated as much chatter as House of the Dragon, but that’s understandable considering that was the first spin-off show of Thrones.

And it shows in the viewership. Its 6.7 million views across HBO and HBO Max throughout the course of its first three days indicates there is still interest, but it’s a hefty drop from the 9.99 million who watched House of the Dragon in just its first day. It will be interesting to see if it holds steady or sees its number dwindle like House of the Dragon‘s did after the first two episodes.

Like Netflix, Disney+ isn’t always keen on releasing viewership numbers, so it’s not possible to draw any true apples-to-apples comparisons but compared to how much online chatter Loki and WandaVision created, Wonder Man‘s doesn’t quite measure up. And that’s unfortunate because, along with those two shows, it stands as the best of Disney+’s Marvel Cinematic Universe output. To be fair to it, though, be it Star Wars or MCU, Disney+ series viewership has been steadily decreasing (with the aberrant spike for something like The Mandalorian Season 3 and Obi-Wan) over the past six years.

This leads us to Andor. This is the one that proves that glowing word of mouth can actually reverse the trend of Star Wars shows on Disney+. The Mandalorian generated more hype than Andor beyond a shadow of a doubt, but the lesser amount of hype for Andor was never anything short of extremely enthusiastic.

Season 2 actually garnered more viewers as it went on, even becoming the most watched show of any streamer when it debuted its final three episodes, according to The Hollywood Reporter. But the fact remains that Andor, the best series Disney+ has ever produced, still paled in comparison to all three seasons of The Mandalorian, the uninvolving narrative sludge that was The Book of Boba Fett, or Ahsoka. Even in this case, quality did not necessarily translate to quantity.

Lastly, we arrive on Earth. Alien: Earth, that is. This is another one where it’s difficult to draw any apples-to-apples comparisons considering this was treading new ground. There hadn’t been a Xenomorph or Yautja show before this. In terms of viewership this one didn’t reach the mark of the Andors or A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms of the world. However, it wasn’t entirely unsteady, either. It debuted it 0.589 million viewers and closed its season with 0.469 million viewers. That was enough of a hold to get it a Season 2 order, anyway.

But let’s compare that to creator Noah Hawley’s other small screen translation of a big screen classic: Fargo. Throughout its first four seasons not once did a single episode go as low as Earth‘s high of 0.589 million viewers. And the primary reason the fifth season suffered in comparison to what came before was because Season 3 and, especially, Season 4 didn’t always do enough or have enough to say to justify their episode count. People had tuned out.

In short, people saw that first episode of Alien and knew it was going to take the IP in some wild directions, and it sure did. Even with the second season en route it’s hard to imagine this one lasting as long as Fargo, because while it is a solid and thought-provoking series, it’s the type of niche narrative with big swings that loses viewers in time as opposed to gains them between seasons.

But just like the intimate focus of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, the lack of super heroics and overall buddy comedy-drama vibe of Wonder Man, and the ultra-mature approach of Andor, Alien: Earth deserves credit for making a well-worn property feel fresh again. In this age of reboots and “Requels,” fresh spins are what we need. But just as we need them, they need more of us.

What is your favorite of these four shows? Leave a comment below and join the conversation now in the ComicBook Forum!