Last night’s penultimate episode of “The Last of Us” pulled in an impressive 8.1 million viewers on Sunday night in same-day viewing – that includes viewing through the HBO Network or streamed via HBO Max before midnight.
According to Warner Bros. Discovery, that makes the episode titled “When We Are In Need” the most watched of the series thus far and a 74% increase in the viewership of the series premiere which drew an audience of 4.7 million people in comparative measurement.
HBO reported that the series was consistently growing from episode to episode through its first four episodes with the fourth clocking in at 7.5 million viewers in same-day measurement.
Then it was decided to release the fifth episode to HBO Max two days early to avoid competing with the Grammys, doing so understandably likely impacted the numbers but HBO didn’t release any numbers for the fifth through seventh episodes.
“The Last of Us” had the second-most watched debut for HBO in over a decade, behind only “House of the Dragon” with 5.7 million. One key difference is that the ratings of ‘Dragon’ dropped off whereas with “The Last of Us” they are rising.
According to Forbes using its own ratings measurement tool, the only HBO series to see the kind of nearly double viewership increase they’re tracking is “The White Lotus” albeit with lower overall viewership numbers for that awards darling.
One of the reasons HBO is being forthcoming with the figures is that next weekend’s season finale airs opposite the Oscars and in doing so it will likely impact the viewership enough to make this past weekend’s episode the highest rater of the run.
HBO has previously indicated that once delayed and catchup viewing across all platforms is accounted for, the series has been averaging 20 million viewers per episode.
Source: Variety
