Mondays numbers have come in and The Gifted faced an enormous slump in its penultimate episode. The freshman series shrank dramatically to one and half million viewers, over a million fewer than last week’s numbers. What could have caused such a drop?

Well, the CW DC Comics universe premiered their yearly series crossover on Arrow at the same time as The Gifted this week. While the numbers for the crossover events have dropped from previous years, they still garner enough of an audience from their established fan base that many people likely could only justify one superhero show that hour. And they weren’t going to give their time to an untested newcomer.

It didn’t help that the time slot had steeper than usual competition from the other channels. The Gifted has continually suffered under the thumb of the current time slot leader The Voice since its premiere, but now it had two other ratings juggernauts to compete with. The first was the recently moved Superior Donuts, which drew in a significant five million viewership. The biggest, however, was the CMA Country Christmas event on ABC. While this was a one time event and will likely help The Gifted return to higher numbers for its finale, the event drew an enormous eight million viewers that caused significant damage to the show.

It’s very likely The Gifted will stabilize next week if nothing else comes out of the blue, but it was a rough week for the series.