‘Fallout’: Amazon Says Season 2 Is Tracking As One Of Its Top 4 Returning Series, But Won’t Release Viewership Stats, Yet
Fallout returned to Prime Video with its second season last month, prompting questions about the sophomore installment of the video game adaptation over the course of the last six weeks. With just two episodes left to go, the streamer is finally pulling back the curtain (just slightly) on the Season 2 audience.
As it stands, Amazon said Season 2 of Fallout is the top-performing season on Prime Video since Reacher Season 3, which debuted in February 2025. The streamer added that it is also currently the No. 6 TV season of all time on Prime Video. It falls behind both Seasons 1 and 2 of Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, Reacher Seasons 2 and 3, and the first season of Fallout.
In terms of returning seasons only, Fallout Season 2 lands at No. 4, once again trailing Reacher and Rings of Power.
While the series is set in a post-apocalyptic Los Angeles, it seems to have a pretty wide global appeal thanks to the popularity of the video game it is adapted from. Per Amazon, 53% of Fallout Season 2’s audience is international with outsized viewing in the UK, Germany, and Brazil. The company also says its one of the streamer’s Top 5 most-watched TV seasons ever among men 18-34.
“We are thrilled with the Fallout S2 reception from audiences and critics globally. After its first four weeks, Fallout S2 already ranks as the sixth most watched season ever on Prime Video and is even higher rated on Rotten Tomatoes than S1,” Peter Friedlander, Head of Global TV at Amazon MGM Studios, said in a statement to Deadline. “More than half of the season’s audience to-date has come from outside the U.S., and we’re excited for even more viewers to discover the show as we continue to release new episodes over the weeks ahead.”
That said, Amazon is still declining to provide actual viewership data for the second season, which continues to fuel speculation about the performance. Sources familiar with the internal strategy tell Deadline that the streamer is likely to wait until all episodes are available before releasing numbers, if it does so at all.
For what it’s worth, the company touted that Season 1 had amassed 65M viewers within 16 days of release back in 2024.
Prime Video shifted its rollout strategy for Fallout, releasing episodes weekly rather than all at once as it did with Season 1, making comparisons using third party data extremely difficult. Amazon surely has enough data to make episodic comparisons, it would be unlikely to tell the full story at this time, because of the differences in audience interaction with binge releases versus a weekly rollout.
The series reappeared on the Nielsen streaming charts in Season 2’s debut week with 794M minutes viewed during the week of December 15 to 21 among U.S. viewers. However, that total is across all nine available episodes. Season 1 generated 2.9B minutes viewed across all eight episodes in its first five days of availability. So, while the series put up a much lower total in the week of Season 2’s debut, that’s to be expected given that there was only one hour of new material.
Deadline previously used Nielsen’s available data to determine some rough approximations on Season 2’s premiere week performance, which indicated that the series is likely down versus Season 1 — at least for now. That could change as more episodes are released leading to the finale on February 6. The big question is, if it has declined, how much?
Small audience declines are common and even somewhat expected, depending on a variety of factors, including the length of the hiatus between seasons and, as we previously mentioned, differences in release strategy.
Amazon also opted not to submit Season 2 for Golden Globes consideration and wait until the 2026 Emmys to kick off its awards campaign before submitting for the Critics Choice and guild awards in 2027. Since only the first three episodes will be available on the platform by the submission deadlines this year, the company cited a legitimate fear of leaks of unreleased episodes as the official reason for the decision. There is a proven track record of serious awards contention boosting viewership for TV series, which Fallout could currently be missing out on. However, the decision to wait to campaign for Season 2 could set the stage to benefit the eventual third season, depending on when that’s released.
A source tells Deadline that Prime Video execs have heard the pitch for Season 3 and that things are “charging forward,” but no word yet on when to expect production on those episodes to begin.
