Here are the ratings for each season premiere/final to know where we stand going into S5B
Season One Premiere Ratings : 4.0 (“The Pilot”)
Season One Finale Ratings: 3.3 (“A Land Without Magic”)
Season Two Premiere Ratings: 3.9 (“Broken”)
Season Two Final Ratings: 2.3 (“…And Straight On ‘Till Morning”)
Season Three-A Premiere Ratings: 2.6 (“The Heart Of The Truest Believer”)
Season Three-A Finale Ratings: 1.9 (“Going Home”)
Season Three-B Premiere Ratings: 2.4 (“New York City Serenade”)
Season Three-B Finale Ratings : 2.3 (“Snow Drifts”/”There’s No Place Like Home”)
Season Four-A Premiere Ratings: 3.5 (“A Tale Of Two Sisters”)
Season Four-A Finale Ratings: 1.7 (“Heroes and Villains”)
Season Four-B Premiere Ratings: 2.2 (“Darkness On The Edge Of Town”)
Season Four-B Finale Ratings: 1.8 (“Operation Mongoose Part 1 and Part 2”)
Season Five-A Premiere Ratings: 1.7 (“The Dark Swan”)
Season Five-A Finale Ratings: 1.3 (“Swan Song”)
As you can see, overall we only dropped -.4 from start to finish. That’s actually pretty good for a drama show; for example “Empire” is probably the biggest network drama on TV right now. This season it started at a 6.7 and ended with a 4.5, which is a loss of -2.2. Obviously a much larger drop, but still very high because it started so high. Dropping -.4 would be more acceptable if we had started so high, but it’s worth mentioning that OUAT didn’t drop right off the bat; it took a full 10/11 episodes to drop to the low. It falls over a longer period of time which means for 5B–if that trend continues–the numbers will only be lowest at the end (AKA: we’re getting renewed).