Oscar or “The Last of Us” What are you going to see on Sunday?

Will Joel and Ellie finally make it to the doctors in ‘The Last of Us’? Will Michelle Yeoh win the Best Actress Oscar? Both questions will be answered this Sunday, but viewers may have to choose which answer they want in real time. The season finale of HBO’s hit faces the Oscars live broadcast on ABC in the US and TNT in Latin America.

Of course, there is a possibility of seeing both. The Oscars begin at 8 p.m. New York time (0000 GMT); “The Last of Us” airs at 9 p.m. Viewers could start their night watching the Oscars, click on “The Last of Us,” and return for the final hour of the ceremony. This is when the biggest categories are usually handed out, but this shot comes with the risk of missing some exciting unscripted moments. What if you choose to keep the Oscars at all times? You risk being told details about the fate of the characters of Bella Ramsey and Pedro Pascal.

Much of the debate boils down to the zeitgeist, says Robert Thompson, a Syracuse University professor specializing in mass media and director of the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture. “Watching television is not just watching a show. … It’s about talking about it and doing your part,” Thompson said. “I suspect a lot of people will want to talk about ‘The Last of Us’, get up on their keyboards and talk to other people, and all that kind of stuff.”

Thompson says the Oscars have “the most to lose” in the match against the video game’s apocalyptic adaptation of fungus-infected zombies.

Last year’s televised ceremony drew an estimated 15.36 million viewers, an improvement from the all-time low of 9.85 million who tuned in to watch in 2021. The Oscars have advertising dollars at stake, which which is not something to watch. HBO must be worried. “The Last of Us” drew a peak of 8.1 million viewers for its penultimate episode.

“The Oscars are a live event, you really have to watch live to register the broadcast ratings. It’s the audience they matter,” Thompson said. “If people choose to watch ‘The Last of Us’, it will affect the Oscar rankings. If people choose to watch the Oscars, they have plenty of other times to watch “The Last of Us.”

Interestingly, HBO gave in to the ratings giant that is the Super Bowl, premiering the fifth episode of “The Last of Us” on its HBO Max and HBO On Demand streaming service early last month on Friday. , before the big game. HBO aired the episode on cable while the Philadelphia Eagles took on the Kansas City Chiefs. In the end, the Chiefs were victorious, and the Super Bowl was the third-most-watched television show in history, averaging 113.1 million people tuned, according to Nielsen.

The network did not provide an official explanation for the scheduling change, and an HBO publicist said it had “nothing to add” on its decision to keep the program as it is during the Oscars. .

Pascal, however, will get the best of both worlds on Sunday. The ‘The Last of Us’ star will also perform at the Oscars. It is unclear when he will appear on the three-hour show.

So which channel are you going to watch the internet’s favorite dad on?