Say what you will about The Witcher and all of the adapted works surrounding Andrzej Sapkowski’s books, as well as the casting choices in the Netflix show, but the numbers don’t lie – Netflix’s The Night Agent has turned out to be a more popular viewing option than the (for now) Henry Cavill-led fantasy series.
Data that’s come in from Netflix’s most up-to-date Top 10 rankings revealed that The Night Agent proved to be more widely watched than The Witcher, when comparing the first 28 days the shows spent on the streaming service. The first season of The Witcher had a commendable 541 million hours viewed in its first month, whereas The Night Agent’s first run of episodes drew in over 605.6 million. The adaptation of the Matthew Quirk novel also leapfrogged Stranger Things 3, and Lucifer season 5.
Granted, there are more variables at play than what’s at face value – for instance, Netflix was still in its late stages of consistent growth when The Witcher had first released back in 2019, so chances are there were fewer subscribers on the platform overall at the time. Still, the numbers are what they are.
For those that are curious, the most successful first month for any TV show to ever land on Netflix is Stranger Things 4, with a whopping 1.3 billion hours viewed. It is followed by the absurdly impressive debut season of Wednesday, then the extremely controversial Dahmer: Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story. All three of these shows landed last year.
While we anxiously await Henry Cavill’s final season as the titular character in The Witcher before Liam Hemsworth steps in for season four, we can’t help but feel like it’s not going to be able to dethrone any of the top show debuts that are currently in the streaming platform’s debut chart.