According to TorrentFreak, Disney +’s “Star Wars” spin-off series dropped “Game of Thrones” as the most pirated show of the year.
Despite and probably due to the wide availability at home on the Disney + streaming platform, “The Mandalorian” ended up becoming the most pirated television show of 2020 using BitTorrent. This is according to an analysis by TorrentFreak, “based on several sources, including statistics reported by public BitTorrent trackers”. In the global ranking of the most torrented programs worldwide for 2020, downloads for a full season are not counted.
The list was historically led by the HBO fantasy series “Game of Thrones”, which ended its eighth and final season in May 2019. But, for the first time in years, George RR Martin’s extensive epic was destroyed by the space western ” Star Wars “by-product. In 2019, during its first season, “The Mandalorian” was the third most torrented show according to the same survey.
Other successful torrent titles, according to the ranking, are a reflection of some of the most popular television programs outside of piracy. Prime Video’s irreverent superhero series “The Boys” is in second place, HBO’s “Westworld” is in third, Prime Video’s “Vikings” is in four, CBS’s “Star Trek: Picard” is in five, followed by “Swim and Rick” by Adult Swim, “The Walking Dead” by AMC, “The Outsider” by HBO, “The Arrow” by CW and “The Flash” by CW.
The TorrentFreak survey, it should be noted, only accounts for BitTorrent traffic, which represents only a fraction of online piracy, which also includes illegal streaming services.
“The Mandalorian” concluded its second season on December 18 with high praise for fans, including the announcement of another secondary series from “Star Wars”, “The Book of Boba Fett”. The season also ended with a memorable cameo.
The ending, however, had its detractors. Tyler Hersko of IndieWire wrote: “The end of season 2 of ‘The Mandalorian’ marks the long-awaited confrontation between Mando (Pedro Pascal) and Moff Gideon (Giancarlo Esposito) after Grogu’s kidnapping at the beginning of the season. Although the episode delivered on that front, presents a partnership between many of the series’ outstanding characters and resolves the search that Mando started at the beginning of the season, he does so with so many noisy and painful action scenes – and aggravating unanswered questions – that the end result is not particularly cathartic. “
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