Lack of live viewing experience is hurting The Mandalorian in more ways than one
Between an inconvenient drop time and spoilers rampant across social media by the time people wake up, The Mandalorian has a problem it may not be able to solve.
Hello friends!
The Mandalorian has been one of the best shows of 2020, and yet, instead of being inspired after the incredible season two finale, I felt a bit off. Turns out, I’m not alone! Enjoy this dive into The Mandalorian, spoiler culture, and the missing magic of that good old shared live community experience.
(Photo via Disney)
Early Friday morning, the season finale of The Mandalorian dropped on Disney+ worldwide, capping off an eight-episode sophomore season for the Star Wars television series. Don’t worry, you won’t find any spoilers here, but for your sake you may as well stop reading this now and catch up before you do get spoiled out there.
It’s clear by now that The Mandalorian is appointment television, but one with a frustratingly fatal flaw. Unlike Game of Thrones, whose reputation may have tanked by the show’s end but was still overall must-see TV to the final shot, The Mandalorian does not air at a usual time slot that syncs well with the overall American audience. Disney+ opts to drop new episodes of The Mandalorian on Fridays at 3 a.m. ET, or midnight on the west coast, simultaneously giving access to the new episode to everyone across the world at the same time.
While it’s great to see that barrier removed for the worldwide audience — who would have to jump through (illegal) hoops to have access to American TV shows as they aired live — the decision creates a problem for American audiences that hasn’t been faced on this scale before.
This season, my typical Mandalorian experience isn’t anything special: I wake up, check social media, and by around 10 or 11 a.m., my sister and I sit down to watch the new episode together. By that point, usually I have already seen multiple references to what happens in the newest episode on Twitter or a GIF of a moment on Tumblr. While I’ve been aware enough not to have any major moments spoiled for me this season (I’m more than familiar with having to stay off of social media for a piece of media I do not want to be spoiled for), I know that experience has not been the same for many.
And I think, in the long run, it will be to the detriment of The Mandalorian and what Disney has been building here.
The problem, as I see it, is two-fold. The biggest issue that arrises from The Mandalorian’s unusual drop time is the spoilers. Unlike Game of Thrones, whose 9 p.m. ET airtime was a loud and clear signal to anyone to get the hell off Twitter lest they be spoiled, The Mandalorian drops in the middle of the night for most in the Western Hemisphere. By the time those on the East Coast wake up, there are already spoilers flooding social media feeds. Muting words can only go so far if someone you follow tweets or retweets a moment or a picture without context.
There is also now the trends tab/bar on Twitter, which can be a hive of out of context spoilers depending on how the algorithm shakes out that day. From my knowledge, muting words does not work when searching on Twitter’s explore tab, meaning you’re taking a risk every time you wade into that pool even if you’ve already taken the necessary precautions on your timeline.
There’s no real way to totally stamp down on seeing inadvertent spoilers for shows or other pieces of media. Sometimes it just happens! And it’s always going to happen, given the 24/7 hour news cycle we have at our disposal thanks to the internet and social media. While I’ve been privileged to tap out of social media to avoid spoilers, I’ve also been on the other side of the coin where I had to be online for my job while something I didn’t want to be spoiled for was airing.
And it sucks! I was online and covering a playoff hockey game during the Game of Thrones episode “The Door” — if you know, you know — and I was spoiled for the big twist. We’ve all been there, and it can be frustrating to have that experience taken from you.
(Of course, there’s an argument to be made if Spoiler Culture™️ as it is now is a healthy way to consume media, but that’s for another time. Personally, I engaged in Game of Thrones leak discussion back in the day, but of my own free will. Inadvertent and accidental spoiler-ing feels like another matter altogether.)
Where The Mandalorian falters here is that, unlike Game of Thrones, there is no consensus time when spoilers are allowed to be talked about freely on social media because the drop time for episodes isn’t an event anymore. Within the confines of your own personal bubble of friends and family, you’ll be able to spoil to your heart’s content. On the wider world of social media, however? It’s anyone’s guess! Officially, Disney waits until Monday to start posting on their social channels, but good luck to any fan waiting that long.
Extending from the spoiler problem The Mandalorian has is the other, longer-term problem I foresee: the lack of a shared community experience that Game of Thrones had. Excluding its flaws and overall reception, Game of Thrones is still the poster child for the term appointment television. At 9 p.m. on Sunday, the world came to a standstill and social media came alive as reactions, memes, and the general public’s stream of consciousness was laid bare as an episode unfolded.
Sure, some events are still that way on social media. Take sporting events, or the election and the debates leading up to it this year. While some moments have come close — emergency backup goalie David Ayres taking the ice, the fly on Mike Pence’s head during a debate, Pennsylvania turning blue — we’ve yet to hit that same consistent high we did with Game of Thrones each week.
Hell, I saw more social media buzz for Destiel going canon in Supernatural the night that episode aired than I have for the season finale of The Mandalorian so far today.
For all its praise, there’s still something fundamentally missing from The Mandalorian experience: that magic of the shared community event. Of knowing that you and hundreds of thousands of others are tuning in at the same time to watch the same thing unfold in all its unspoiled glory. The Mandalorian has hit a lot of high notes in its short two seasons, moments that would have absolutely benefited so much more from being a shared live experience instead of a scattered one.
I don’t know if there’s really a solution that will solve these problems The Mandalorian faces. Adopting a strict, but accessible drop time that will incentivize live viewing in the way Game of Thrones did is the biggest, easiest solution at face value. It’s how TV viewing used to be done (may I just say, it killed me to write that sentence 💀) and it’s not like we’ve got much going on on Friday nights anyway given the state of things.
And yet, that solution isn’t a perfect one. Locking The Mandalorian behind an 8 or 9 p.m. ET drop time would just throw the Eastern Hemisphere into the same problem Western audiences have now. Sure, it is a head-scratching decision that Disney wouldn’t prioritize its wide American audience in an effort to capitalize on the hype and buzz it’d bring. However, given that the Star Wars brand is as big as it is and will draw eyeballs anyway, and that global streaming is the way we primarily consume media now, it — unfortunately — makes sense.
In the aftermath of The Mandalorian’s season finale, it does feel that we’ve lost something vital along the way. I already linked Julia Alexander’s piece from The Verge above, but I wanted to expand upon a few sentences that really get at the heart of what’s missing:
By the time the episode ends, Twitter is full of jokes and gasps depending on what played out over the last few minutes. Friends who have gotten together for watch parties are bouncing. Memes start spreading. Watching a big show feels more like a communal affair than a solitary activity — something we really needed this year. People want The Mandalorian earlier or later because they want to experience it with the world.
…It just sucks that an event-type show as big as Mandalorian can’t really ever create the same beautiful, appointment TV, communal viewing experience that Game of Thrones provided.
It really does! The Mandalorian has all the fundamental building blocks to become the next Game of Thrones, but the lack of a live television viewing experience is holding it back from its true potential. I don’t know if a problem like this is even on Disney’s radar because The Mandalorian is a smash hit regardless of when and how it airs, but it’s a shame we likely won’t be able to recapture that magic of a live community experience this show rightly deserves.
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