After years of serving as the streaming game’s antsy little kid sibling, constantly begging to tag along on your phone or tablet, YouTube Red may finally have a hit on its hand. According to Variety, people are apparently invested enough in the fate of a middle-aged Daniel-San and his adult rival Johnny to have tuned in in droves to the service’s new Karate Kid sequel Cobra Kai, possibly even beating out Netflix and Hulu’s offerings for the week.
We do need to take this with a massive crane kick’s worth of salt, though; because streaming services are notoriously tight-lipped about their viewing numbers, all of this data comes from third-party monitoring service Parrot Analytics, which purports to measure “demand” for various streaming shows through a combination of viewer numbers, social media influence, and other, more nebulous numbers. According to those metrics, Cobra Kai’s demand outpaced several shows from more established providers over the last week, including Netflix’s Lost In Space and Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale. (It also apparently beat Arrested Development and 13 Reasons Why, which is less impressive, given that they haven’t actually aired their new seasons yet, but apparently “demand” covers the future, too.)
It remains to be seen whether the series—which stars Ralph Macchio and William Zabka as the aging kick-punch men—will be able to hold on to that interest; Cobra Kai’s already-ordered second season is set to air some time in 2019.