It’s been an awfully long drive to (HBO) Max for Duster, which was greenlit in 2020 as part of co-creator J.J. Abrams’ nine-figure overall deal with the company then known as WarnerMedia. Now that it’s finally here, the company soon to be formerly known as Warner Bros. Discovery may be wondering if the trip was really necessary.
Four weeks into Duster‘s debut season, it has become clear the 1970s-set crime drama isn’t setting the streaming world on fire. As measured by Luminate Streaming Viewership (M), the series failed to rank among the weekly top 50 streaming originals — the cutoff for inclusion on Luminate’s weekly charts — for its first three weeks of release. (The show finally did chart in week 4 — at No. 50.)
Meanwhile, recent runs of fellow Max originals Hacks and The Pitt ranked on the TV chart for multiple weeks, with the latter remaining well over a month after its debut season concluded.
Worth noting, of course, is that Duster was at a disadvantage out of the gate. Both The Pitt and the latest season of Hacks launched with double-episode premieres, while Duster is dropping just one entry each week, putting it an episode behind the pace of its competitors.
And digging deeper into the data reveals the Duster audience hasn’t grown as more episodes have rolled out.
Estimated views for Duster (measured in minutes streamed divided by runtime) have dropped significantly each week even as the show’s total running time has expanded, indicating the series is losing traction with viewers with every passing week. Indeed, episodic data shows that only the series’ first two entries have crested 1 million views so far.
One possible note of encouragement for Duster is the performance of Hacks, which has consistently started slowly before seeing its engagement jump later in the season. In fact, the new series’ second week outperformed that of Hacks Season 4, which itself recorded a major dip in viewership before bouncing back with the following installment.
It’s possible Duster could follow a similar trajectory and find its breakout moment down the road, but for now the engine on this muscle car seems to be stalling out.
