Pretty much ever since the first teaser trailer was released back in May 2017, Marvel’s Inhumans has been struggling to free itself from a smothering blanket of negative publicity. From being called out by the fans over some blatantly sub-par visual effects, to brutally savage early reviews from critics, and finally some car-crash marketing in the weeks leading up to the serious premiere, here was a show that just couldn’t seem to be capable of catching a break.
ABC executives would have been praying that the project’s heavily marketed IMAX premiere might have finally bought them some much coveted good news. After all, this was the series they had pinned all of their hopes to having cancelled Agent Carter, and subsequently passed on a pilot for ‘Marvel’s Most Wanted’. Alas, the viewing figures and reviews for the first two episodes only heaped further misery on their shoulders, and this week’s mid-season share of the audience makes for some even more depressing reading.
It’s natural for the number of viewers to tumble away over the duration it takes any TV series to fully air, but given the fact that this season is only 8 episodes long, the figures for last night’s fifth episode are nothing short of a disaster.
Deadline reports that ‘Something Inhuman This Way Comes’ topped off at 1.98 million viewers, representing a 0.4% share of the show’s target audience. Let us explain just how bad that is for you.
Despite having won over the critics, and a very vocal section of Marvel fans, Agent Carter was the company’s first perceived failure within the MCU. This was a show that barely managed to earn itself a second season, and has since been quietly swept under the carpet by ABC. The final instalment of Season 1 however, managed to pull in 4.02 million viewers (1.3%), which subsequently dropped down to 2.35 million (0.7%} for the closing episode of Season 2. That’s still nearly twice the audience share that Inhumans is achieving, figures that will continue to fall for another four weeks yet.
So how about drawing some comparisons with Agents of SHIELD, then? That’s a show that’s experienced more than it’s fair share of hate, and had to go through some pretty serious format-changes to stay alive. Season 4’s opening episode pulled in 3.44 million watchers (1.1%), which then dropped back down to 2.08 million (0.7%) by the end of the series finale. Again, double nearly the share ‘Inhumans’ currently finds itself attaining.
Admittedly, the story was always going to be one of the most challenging ones that Marvel had to try and find a way to sell. When your cast of characters includes a guy who never speaks, a giant teleporting dog, and a female with sentient hair, you’re setting a significant challenge for your production team. But this is the company who sold us a talking raccoon and Howard The Duck, how did they screw it up so badly?
When the dust settles, and the postmortem on this sorry saga is finally complete, the sheer lack of effort on the part of the show-runners will be painfully obvious. None of the lessons of Marvel’s Iron Fist have been learned, with those responsible banking on the brand name, alongside the good grace and forgiveness of the established fan base to carry them over the line into a second season.
Why would you waste eight hours of your life on something so poorly scripted, with such cheap CGI and lazy action sequences when you have the likes of Stranger Things and The Expanse available to stream? Sure, this could just be a painful lesson for the high-ups at Marvel to learn from. More worryingly it could signal a significant drop in quality control, which would be downright foolhardy in today’s crowded marketplace.