The Chosen has a strange Rotten Tomatoes score and this is why

The Chosen Season 5 premieres in cinemas this weekend, but if you’ve checked the show’s Rotten Tomatoes page, you may be a little confused.

When Dallas Jenkins directed The Shepherd in 2017, a short film exploring the birth of Jesus, he couldn’t have known what lay ahead.

More than five years later, bolstered by the biggest crowdfunding campaign in TV history and extraordinary viewership (it’s believed to have been viewed more than 500 million times), The Chosen is a bona fide phenomenon.

Eight years later, The Chosen Season 5 is diving into the events of Holy Week, including the Last Supper – and the lead-up to the crucifixion. However, despite its popularity, it has an unusual Rotten Tomatoes score.

The Chosen Rotten Tomatoes score explained

Rotten Tomatoes

The Chosen doesn’t have an average critic score on Rotten Tomatoes. Its “popcornmeter” (aka the show’s audience rating) is sitting at 97%.

If you look through each season’s Rotten Tomatoes pages, only Season 1 has a critic score – and it’s currently rated at 100% from nine reviews, plus a 99% audience rating. Seasons 2-4 don’t have critic scores, but they all have audience ratings between 94-98%.

Rotten Tomatoes

The question is, why? It’s one of the most-watched TV shows worldwide, Prime Video has just become the franchise’s official third-party partner, it’s seen major viewership on other platforms like Disney Plus and Netflix, and Season 5 is getting an international theatrical release.

The reality is that faith-based shows and movies often aren’t as widely reviewed as more typically mainstream projects. For example, Amazon’s House of David series has a 71% Rotten Tomatoes score – but that’s only from seven reviews.

The Last Supper, a competing movie produced by the studio behind the God’s Not Dead film, has four reviews on its Rotten Tomatoes page, which isn’t enough to qualify for a score.

This could change with Season 5 and beyond, given the show’s agreement with Amazon and plans for even wider rollouts for Seasons 6 and 7.

“Their licence fees are going to help us reach a billion much, much faster. We can do things like the Times Square takeover, TV ads, more global outreach,” Jenkins explained in an earlier livestream.

“We can also super-charge the number of translations we can do… you’re going to see people all over the world get this show quicker because of Prime Video faster.”

Before Season 5 arrives, find out where to buy the best merch from The Chosen. You can also read why people think Jonathan Roumie is leaving The Chosen, our breakdown of The Chosen’s deal with Prime Video, and find out how to stream The Chosen for free before Season 5.