Jack Ryan returned to Amazon Prime with new episodes just in time for 2022 to end, and while it generated its fair share of buzz, streaming was dominated in pop culture by another series in the final months of the year: Netflix’s Wednesday. With the show hitting with viewers in addition to leading lady Jenna Ortega going viral for her dance as Wednesday Addams, it was on top of the streaming chart for some time. Now, Jack Ryan has officially bumped Wednesday from the top spot.
Season 3 of Jack Ryan bumped Wednesday down in the list of Nielsen’s U.S. ranking of streaming originals for the week of December 19, according to TVLine, with a total of 1.834 billion minutes. To contrast, Wednesday accumulated just 1.80 billion minutes, with Jack Ryan knocking it out of #1 after four weeks on top.
While this is a win for Jack Ryan, there are some variables to consider. Jack Ryan has run for a total of 24 episodes so far as opposed to Wednesday’s eight, so there are simply more minutes of John Krasinski’s series for viewers to watch.
Plus, Wednesday released on Netflix on November 23, which is almost a full month before Jack Ryan on December 21 in the 2022 TV premiere schedule. If the new seasons had gone head to head, Wednesday likely would have come out on top. It’s also worth noting that the Jack Ryan demographic leans older than Wednesday, with nearly two third of viewers at the age of 50 or over, and more than 50% male.
There's also the point that Jack Ryan was debuting its third season, so it was arguably more likely to reach an established fanbase than attract newcomers, which wasn’t the case for Wednesday in its first season. It will return for a Season 2, with Jenna Ortega and her co-stars reacting to the good news after some time passed with no confirmation that the series would be back.
As for Jack Ryan, the Amazon series will return for Season 4, but that will be the last. News broke ahead of Season 3’s release in 2022 that John Krasinski’s time as the iconic character would end after four seasons, although there’s still the potential for a spinoff. Will Wednesday Season 2 release before Jack Ryan comes to an end? Only time will tell on that front, and there’s no denying that both shows ended 2022 on a strong note.
Of course, Wednesday did already drop in the Top 10 rankings on Netflix prior to Jack Ryan beating it in total minutes watched. In December, the Jenna Ortega show was bumped down to #3, behind Noah Centineo’s The Recruit at #2 and Emily in Paris’ frustrating Season 3 at #1. At the time of writing, Wednesday is still in the Top 10, holding strong at #5.
Neither Jack Ryan Season 4 nor Wednesday Season 2 have release dates so far, and the current data only goes as far back as the week of December 19. It’s entirely possible that they’ll swap places or even be overtaken by another show in the next set of numbers! For now, you can always check out the first three seasons of Jack Ryan with an Amazon Prime subscription and all eight episodes of Wednesday so far with a Netflix subscription.
