The Internet Totally Freaked Out Over the Star Wars Trailer

It’s been 15 hours since the new trailer for Star Wars: The Force Awakens touched down and—you heard it here first, guys—this movie is going to be a big deal.

We showed you how Twitter immediately reacted to the clip during Monday Night Football yesterday, but with a brand new day comes brand new reactions to the trailer on social media. YouTube is winning the play-count race as the official Star Wars channel is climbing towards 13 million views as of 10:30 a.m. PDT. When the first trailer debuted online last November it racked up 20 million views in its first 24 hours online. So far the new one is averaging a little less than one million hits per hour, and if it keeps on this pace it stands a reasonable chance of topping its predecessor, especially since most of America will still be awake while the one day cycle winds to a close.

Those who prefer to take in their videos via Facebook have clicked play more than 7 million times. It only took 23 minutes for the trailer to hit 1 million views on the social platform, and within the first hour after it was posted 1.3 million people accounted for 2.1 million cumulative posts, comments, likes, and shares.

Looking at the trailer's impact on Twitter, however, the new Star Wars trailer wasn't quite as big of a draw as other massive televised events. Yes, it got some 390,000 tweets but the MTV VMAs generated 21.4 million tweets during the Miley Cyrus-hosted 2015 edition of the show, and last year's Super Bowl got 25.3 million tweets. As far as other one-night events go, here's some context: At its peak performance, The Force Awakens trailer was spinning out 17,000 tweets per minute, which puts it below the first Republican presidential debate (29,000 tweets per minute) and above Jon Stewart’s final episode of The Daily Show (3,700 tweets per minute were posted as Stephen Colbert gave his thank you address to the outgoing host). So Twitter loved it less than making fun of Donald Trump and more than a farewell show for a late-night host.

And for those good old-fashioned TV viewers, Monday Night Football did get a handy little bump from The Force. Viewership was up 13 percent week over week from the last MNF broadcast, and the number of people tuning in peaked in the 15 minutes before the trailer debuted. So now you’re thinking "Maybe a bunch of passionate Giants fans just forgot the game was on and turned on the game right before the half!" But considering the Eagles were in the process of routing their opponents, we're going to say it was the droids they were looking for.

If you want to know how Instagram reacted, all you need are these two reaction videos from young Force Awakens stars Daisy Ridley (Rey) and John Boyega (Finn), who recorded themselves watching the trailer for the first time, just like the rest of us. The videos are charming, but consider that this is the first hugely significant project either of these actors has ever been in, and they are effectively introducing themselves to the world/starting their careers by being in freaking Star Wars. Congratulations, kids! Now go run naked in the streets while you’ve still got some shred of anonymity left, because come Dec. 18 you’re going to be two of the biggest stars in the world.