When the penultimate episode of The Last of Us had the best series premiere yet, one server hoped the final episode would hit the 10 million viewer barrier. In the end it was not like that, but even with a whole new record was broken.
Warner Bros. Discovery has revealed that the ninth and final episode of the first season of The Last of Us has been viewed by more than 8.2 million viewers in the first 18 hours since it aired on HBO and became available on HBO Max. They are 100,000 more than last week’s record, so it’s still impressive. Especially since they also tell us that this means that The Last of Us has become the most-watched show on HBO Max in Europe and Latin America.
And to put that debut into perspective, here’s a summary of each episode’s viewership in less than 24 hours (with one exception) after its premiere:
- Episode 1 – 4.7 million (January 15)
- Episode 2 – 5.7 million (January 22)
- Episode 3 – 6.4 million (January 29)
- Episode 4 – 7.5 million (February 5)
- Episode 5 – 11.6 million (February 10 and 12, since they include Friday-Sunday data as it aired earlier to not coincide with the Super Bowl Finals)
- Episode 6 – 7.8 million (February 19)
- Episode 7 – 7.7 million (February 26)
- Episode 8 – 8.1 million (March 5)
- Episode 9 – 8.2 million (March 12)
It will be interesting to see if this upward trend will continue when the second season arrives in 2024.
What did you think of the first season of The Last of Us?