Monarch spoilers ahead.
On Sunday (September 11), the highly-anticipated country music drama Monarch premiered on Fox. The series follows the famous Roman family, led by married country singers Dottie and Albie Roman (played by Susan Sarandon and Trace Adkins ).
The show was first announced that it would premiere in Spring of 2022, but it was eventually pushed back to the fall. As you can see in the “First Look” below, the Roman family has lots of secrets that will be uncovered throughout the series.
In the first episode, the Roman sisters began a battle to see who would wear their mother’s “crown” and become the new Queen of Country Music. In a shocking twist, Dottie died at the end of the episode. We found out earlier in the episode she had been diagnosed with terminal cancer, but wanted to leave the world on her own terms. She enlisted the help of her daughter, Nicky, to end her life. Dottie’s other daughter, Gigi, walked in with Nicky holding a pill bottle, so we can only assume their feud will get nastier.
There has been lots of chatter online about the premiere, so we wanted to know how it fared in the ratings department.
According to Deadline, the show had 3.8 million viewers ages 18-49 for the live broadcast and an additional 1.5 million tuning into the encore, for a total of 5.3 million viewers on premiere night.
The publication also reports that Monarch is Fox’s largest fall premiere since 2019’s Prodigal Son.
What is even more impressive, is that both showing of Monarch on Sunday night were competing against Sunday Night Football, which was Tom Brady’s highly-anticipated return to the field with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. They played the Dallas Cowboys.
The second episode of Monarch will air Tuesday, September 20th.