Sunday’s finale was watched by 8.2 million viewers on all HBO platforms, a small increase from the 8.1 million viewers the week before and the highest viewership of the nine-episode season to date. Viewers have been tuning in to The Last of Us since its Jan. 15 premiere, with an average of 30.4 million viewers across the first six episodes and the premiere episode nearing 40 million viewers.
If the 30.4 million figure remains as returns come in for the final three episodes, it would mean that The Last of Us has garnered more viewers than House of the Dragon. House of the Dragon averaged 29 million cross-platform viewers throughout its run from late summer to fall 2022.
Sunday’s finale of the show was a hit, with 8.2 million viewers tuning in – that’s 74.5% more than the 4.7 million who watched the series debut in January. Most of the show’s audience is watching on HBO Max, with only 12% of the total first-night viewers (846,000 of 6.84 million through episode eight) watching at 9pm on the main HBO cable channel. Don’t forget that on-air replays and DVR playback also make up a portion of the total, but the majority of viewers are still watching on HBO Max.
Unsurprisingly, the Last of Us has been a massive success for HBO – its cumulative audience of 30.4 million is the highest for any HBO series since the final season of Game of Thrones, with 44 million viewers, aired in 2019. The seventh season of Game of Thrones in 2017 had 32.5 million viewers, and although Thrones aired before HBO Max was launched, about 27 percent of its viewership (nearly 12 million) watched it on the linear channel, with the remainder coming from replays, DVR and the streaming services at the time, HBO Go and HBO Now.
Source: hollywoodreporter
