‘Andor’ Owns the Galaxy for Millennials and Gen X While ‘The Mandalorian’ Wins Every Other Generation, Nielsen Data Reveals

Star Wars has never been one thing to all people, and a new wave of streaming data makes that clearer than ever. The franchise spans decades of storytelling, from animated adventures aimed at younger audiences to gritty prestige dramas built for viewers who came of age during the prequel era. What makes the galaxy far, far away so durable is precisely this range, and fresh numbers from Nielsen put some hard figures behind that intuition.

According to Nielsen, U.S. viewers devoted a staggering 33 billion minutes to Star Wars content across linear television and streaming in 2025, equivalent to 550 million hours of movies, shows, and animated projects watched in a single year. That kind of scale puts the franchise firmly in the same conversation as the biggest entertainment properties on the planet, regardless of any discourse about individual titles underperforming.

The generational breakdown buried inside that headline figure is where things get genuinely interesting. For Gen Alpha viewers aged two to thirteen, ‘The Mandalorian’ claimed the top spot, while Gen Z audiences aged fourteen to twenty-nine gravitated toward ‘The Clone Wars.’ Millennials and Gen X both landed on ‘Andor’ as their most-streamed pick, and Baby Boomers circled back to ‘The Mandalorian’ as well.

The pattern suggests that ‘The Mandalorian’ functions as something of a franchise anchor across the age spectrum, appealing to the youngest viewers with its accessible adventure and to older audiences with its nostalgic Western energy, while ‘Andor’ carved out its own territory in the middle.

‘Andor’ led all live-action Star Wars series with 7.4 billion minutes watched across 2025, and its second season drove the show into Nielsen’s Top Ten Streaming Originals chart for six consecutive weeks. That performance is all the more remarkable given that the show was once considered a niche entry in the franchise, a slow-burn political drama that asked audiences to invest in a world without lightsaber duels or Force powers at the center of the story.

‘Andor’ season two launched with a 98 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes, making it the highest-rated live-action Star Wars project ever, edging out its own first season which held a 96 percent score.

The show also became the first television series in IMDb history to have five consecutive episodes with user scores of 9.5 or above, with the episode depicting the Ghorman massacre currently holding the highest rating of 9.8. For a franchise that has at times struggled to maintain consistent critical favor across its Disney era, those numbers represent something of a turning point.

Live-action movies still accounted for the largest share of total Star Wars viewing in 2025 at 44.2 percent, followed by live-action series at 38.9 percent and animated content at 16.8 percent. The original ‘A New Hope’ remained the most-watched film of the year, a testament to how the foundation of the franchise still draws viewers back no matter how many new stories get added on top.

Looking ahead, the franchise is preparing for the theatrical release of ‘The Mandalorian and Grogu’ on May 22, 2026, with Pedro Pascal returning under the direction of Dave Filoni, alongside a second season of ‘Ahsoka’ currently in production. If the Nielsen data is any guide, the galaxy still has plenty of room to grow in every direction.

Let us know in the comments which Star Wars series is your personal most-streamed pick, and whether you think your generation’s top choice is the right call.