In late August, HBO launched the House of the Dragon series, an adaptation of the book Fire & Blood by writer George R.R. Martin. At the same time, already in early September, the premiere of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power series took place, which is a prequel to The Lord of the Rings movie trilogy based on the novel by J. R. R. Tolkien. Given that both projects were actively discussed in the media worldwide, Streams Charts team decided to check the reaction of Twitch users to the new shows. The interesting observations and conclusions can be found below.
House of the Dragon
We analyzed the number of messages featuring the name of each series preceding the premiere of the first episode of each, as well as during subsequent weeks. Shortly before the release, between August 15 and 20, the HotD series was mentioned 315 to 716 times on 9 to 17 different channels on Twitch. But already on August 21, the day before the premiere of the first episode, these figures increased several times: up to 2.3K messages on 114 channels.
The first episode of House of the Dragon aired on August 22. On this day, the name of the series on Twitch was mentioned 6.2K times on 226 different channels, and these are the peak figures from the moment the show started and till the publishing of this very article. Five days after the release of the first episode, the number of mentions decreased to pre-premiere levels, making this the largest drop in the first four weeks.
A quick look at the graph shows that the number of mentions of the series on Twitch is growing in accordance with the schedule for the release of new episodes. At the same time, the number of messages and streams after the release of the second and subsequent episodes remains approximately at the same level. We can conclude that users have a strong interest in the series, with the episodes being actively discussed throughout the week after their release, and not just for the first couple of days.
Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power
As we mentioned earlier, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power series premiered a little later. It turned out that before the premiere of the series, The Rings of Power had more references than House of the Dragon before the release of the first episode. The series from Amazon was discussed 2-3 times more actively, most likely because of the trailers that came out shortly before the premiere.
The Rings of Power premiered on the evening of September 1 in the Americas, but the first two episodes became available in other regions on September 2. During these two days, the number of mentions of the series on Twitch amounted to 4.9K and 12K, respectively, this is twice as much as the first episode of House of the Dragon. The next two episodes were released on the night of September 9th. During this period, the series was mentioned in about 5.3K messages.
It should be noted that the premiere of The Rings of Power series attracted great criticism from fans of Tolkien's works. Many wrote that the creators of the show chose the wrong cast and deviated too far from the canonical portrayal of elves, hobbits, and dwarves. In turn, the actors of the Lord of the Rings trilogy decided to support the creators of the show in their decision to invite black actors and experiment with lore.
The graph of The Rings of Power features an abnormal jump in mentions on September 5, just between the release of episodes 1-2 and 3-4 of the series. Most likely, this jump is related to the delayed appearance of the first ratings. It should be reminded that, to combat review bombing, Amazon resticted viewers from rating the series on the Amazon Prime Video page during the first 72 hours after their premiere back in the summer. That is, the viewer ratings of The Rings of Power appeared on the platform just on September 5th.
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The first season of House of the Dragon will end on October 23, while that of The Rings of Power will end on October 14.