Greetings from Brooklyn, where I’m back after a wonderful time at MIPCOM, in Cannes—and welcome back to What I’m Hearing+, my weekly dispatch focused on the streaming industry and the analytics behind it all. If this email was forwarded to you, click here to subscribe.

Tonight, some thoughts on the importance of Disney+’s Andor—its least watched live-action Star Wars series to date, but nevertheless a key building block of the franchise’s future. But first…

• Amazon’s ‘Dragon’ challenge: HBO’s House of the Dragon’s finale brought in 9.3 million U.S. viewers on Sunday, according to the network. Domestically, the series averaged 29 million viewers an episode, putting it roughly behind Game of Thrones’ seventh season in 2018. Its eighth season was averaging closer to 45 million viewers an episode, so while House of the Dragon is big, it’s not quite Game of Thrones. While the finale represents a 6 percent decrease in viewership compared to the premiere, it also sets the bar for Amazon’s Rings of Power.

That series ended nearly two weeks ago, and Amazon hasn’t released any viewership data. This wouldn’t be too surprising, except that Amazon did release premiere numbers, and has consistently released numbers for its Thursday Night Football games. What’s the hold up? The episodic decay rate has been higher for Rings, but it’s not like Dragon saw magnificent episode-to-episode growth. I expect we’ll get Rings numbers soon, too, with all the specific framing that generally comes with reporting last.

• Apple TV+ is getting more expensive: Like death and taxes, streaming price hikes are one of life’s inevitabilities—most frequently on the eve of a strong content quarter. The strategy is to make the product feel as valuable as possible so that customers, even begrudgingly, will continue paying.

But is that the current calculus for Apple, which is raising the price of its streaming service by $1, to $6.99? That represents a 40 percent increase compared to the launch price of $4.99 a month. The bump will make Apple TV+ just $1 less than Disney+ currently (the ad-free version will kick up to $10.99 in December), despite a tenth of the demand and a much smaller catalog. Perhaps Apple is feeling good about a) its subscriber numbers (hmm), b) its forecasted churn rate (hmm), and c) its upcoming content pipeline, to introduce the hike. Netflix typically introduces a hike when the company knows there’s strong content coming down the pipeline. Another possibility is that this is simply the result of global inflation: The increase for Apple TV+ comes with hikes for Apple Music and Apple One, the services bundle that seems key to Apple’s software strategy.

Still, the whole thing is a little perplexing. While demand for Apple TV+ has increased steadily each quarter, according to Parrot Analytics, where I work, I do wonder if the price point will become too much for some customers who signed up as part of a free trial. Nearly three years in, Apple TV+ has accomplished some incredible feats in television and film, including beating out Netflix for the first ever Best Picture winner for a streamer, but the service still feels relatively empty. At least HBO in the ’90s had first-run movies to help sell the service. What is Apple TV+’s everyday value proposition to households inundated with streaming services and price increases? We’ll soon find out.

This is not surprising, given the more mature setting that isn’t ideal for kids—and, in some ways, it might actually be a positive development for a franchise that’s sometimes too obsessed with its own mythology. Previous Star Wars shows like The Book of Boba Fett and Obi-Wan Kenobi tie into nostalgic storylines from the previous films. Mandalorian literally pulls in Luke Skywalker by the end of the second season. But Andor, based on the 2016 film Rogue One, is one of Lucasfilm’s first major attempts to expand the I.P. sandbox. The galaxy becomes Lego bricks instead of puzzle pieces. And that comes with some risks.

Disney’s challenge lies in determining how Star Wars can expand beyond its already sizable fanbase—both by bringing in younger consumers without an emotional attachment to the original films, and by hooking audiences that normally wouldn’t care about Star Wars. We’ve seen Marvel embark on this strategy with Ms. Marvel (a quirky teen comedy in the vein of Scott Pilgrim) and She-Hulk (a satirical workplace comedy that literally pokes fun at Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige and the Marvel content machine) and Warner Bros. with Batgirl (if it had ever been released). Andor, which was created by Bourne Legacy director Tony Gilroy, is a Star Wars show designed by, and designed for, people who aren’t all that interested in more of the same Star Wars. That might not be what superfans want—but, in the long run, it’s exactly what Disney+ needs.

The Bad: Andor debuted with 624 million minutes watched, according to Nielsen. Spread out over three episodes, that’s 208 minutes an episode—less than Boba Fett (381 million minutes per episode), and way less than Obi-Wan (513 million minutes per episode) or the second season of The Mandalorian (about 516 million minutes per episode). Without all three episodes, Andor likely wouldn’t have cracked Nielsen’s Top 10—and even then, it only cracked Top Original Series, not all series. Andor also has far less global demand than any of the other Star Wars series, according to Parrot Analytics, where I work as director of strategy. While Andor has 50x the average demand of all series globally, Boba Fett had 77.6x, Obi-Wan had 68.7x, and Mandalorian had 85x at this point in their respective seasons.

The Good: Andor has the highest Rotten Tomatoes critics score of them all at 95 percent, with a solid audience score of 83 percent. Boba Fett had a split of 66 percent and 55 percent; Obi-Wan had a split of 82 percent and 64 percent; Mandalorian had a split of 93 percent and 92 percent. Andor is a full ranking higher than Obi-Wan on IMDB (8.1 vs 7.1). Interest in the series has also remained relatively consistent globally over the first six episodes, according to Google Trends. It’s trending in the right direction, and Parrot data shows consistent demand across each new episode, even with very little growth.

Disney, of course, would like to see Andor reach Mandalorian levels. TV, after all, is a hits business. Disney would also like to sell merchandise, license characters, and base immersive experiences on Andor as it has with Mandalorian. And, frankly, Disney wants people to fall in love with Andor the way they did Mandalorian, because love for Baby Yoda is monetizable for years. But as Disney is thinking about how to continue scaling Disney+ subscribers using its core brands, Andor is representative of a novel use of I.P. that could bring new people in, both to the service and the franchise.

Separately, there is internal pressure for the next Star Wars movie to be a critical and box office hit, as my colleague Matt Belloni reported a few days ago. Box office returns for The Rise of Skywalker were less than The Last Jedi, and box office returns for The Last Jedi were less than The Force Awakens. Don’t even bring up Solo, which lost close to $80 million on $393 grossed globally. That’s not John Carter-level bad for Disney, but it’s not great for a Star Wars movie. So much flailing on the big screen has made for nervous strategic planning.

Disney’s streaming effort, meanwhile, should broaden and reinvent the genre, as it did with its 2003 and 2008 versions of The Clone Wars animated series, which reached an entirely new generation by embracing animation. (A live-action Disney+ show featuring Ahsoka Tano, who appeared in the 2008 spin-off film and sequel series, is currently in production.) In 2021, Star Wars Visions used anime to try to refresh the format again, attracting the youngest generation yet of new fans. According to audience demographic information collected by Parrot, nearly 40 percent of the audience was Gen Z, whereas Mandalorian skewed much older (Millennial and Gen X). As one former Disney and Lucasfilm executive told me, “Disney+ should be where they experiment with broadening and refreshing the I.P., because when something works they can then take it to the big screen. You also pre-build an audience of fans to show up in cinemas, reducing the theatrical risk somewhat.”

Disney+ is continuing to grow internationally, and will continue to do so as it continues to roll out into new territories. Domestically, however, growth has slowed. The company only added 100,000 subscribers in its third quarter. Price increases in the fourth quarter may affect churn rates in Disney’s strongest revenue markets. Part of sustaining growth is increasing perceived value for current subscribers and adding content that appeals to non-hardcore fans. And Andor was specifically designed to appeal to non-Star Wars fans, according to Gilroy. Disney+, after all, already has the Star Wars nerds in its pocket. Now it needs to create valuable, substantial storytelling inside and outside of its core franchises that appeals to adults and children alike all year round. Andor appeals to both Star Wars fans and the “prestige” crowd who weren’t interested in Boba Fett or Baby Yoda.

Disney+ represents a new creative strategy, according to Lucasfilm executive James Waugh, who noted in an interview ahead of Visions last year that streaming has “changed the way we’re viewing a lot of what’s possible with Star Wars.” This led to a lot of firsts, some more successful than others, but as Gilroy told Variety ahead of Andor’s release, “Why not use the Star Wars canon as a host organism for absolutely realistic, passionate, dramatic storytelling?” The former Disney executive I spoke to agreed, noting, “They may not have gotten the viewership they wanted, but they chose this series to be the one to try something different,” adding that his worry is “this may make them take less risks, and give us more of the same old stuff.”

The last time Lucasfilm backtracked on trying to do something new, it went from the fresh ideas of The Last Jedi to a retread in The Rise of Skywalker, which became the worst reviewed and lowest grossing in the trilogy. Nervousness led to decisions that focused on perceived stability, not expanding the franchise through creative reimagination. The result was serious questions about what the Star Wars film franchise is, and where it’s headed. Disney+, however, has the unique advantage of being able to do more, for less, and to experiment in a way that the Star Wars film division can’t, or won’t do as frequently. So while Andor is the least watched live-action Star Wars series on Disney+, it’s also Lucasfilm’s most important streaming bet yet.