(Spoiler alert: Stop reading now if you do not what to know anything that happened on Sunday’s “Game of Thrones” episode, “The Last of the Starks.”)
The latest “Game of Thrones” may not have broken the series record, but it still did darn good: 17.2 million viewers tuned in to watch “The Last of the Starks” on Sunday across multiple platforms, per HBO.
A week prior, “The Long Night” set a new series record with 17.8 million multiplatform viewers. That was up 12% from the prior week, and topped the Season 8 premiere by 400,000 viewers.
This week saw a 3.4% viewer decline.
Sunday’s Episode 804, “The Last of the Starks,” revealed the aftermath of the Battle of Winterfell and Jon Snow’s and Daenerys’ plans to head south and take King’s Landing, and thus the Iron Throne, from Cersei Lannister. But the Lion Queen had her own strategy brewing in the background with Euron Greyjoy. By the end of the one-hour, 18-minute episode, Cersei had directly or indirectly claimed two lives Dany holds quite dear and set the stage for the “last war” to begin this coming weekend.
HBO’s preferred internal numbers, which count HBO Go, HBO Now and repeats, cut off 30 days after each season finale airs. Per HBO’s own count — so yes, that month-plus-long version — U.S. viewership per season has been:
Season 1: 9.3 million
Season 2: 11.6 million
Season 3: 14.4 million
Season 4: 19.1 million
Season 5: 20.2 million
Season 6: 25.7 million
Season 7: 32.8 million
Below is Nielsen’s version, which counts seven days of delayed viewing per episode. This is a more typical way of looking at things, but it does not count HBO’s significant streaming additions.
Season 1: 3.3 million
Season 2: 4.9 million
Season 3: 6.4 million
Season 4: 9.0 million
Season 5: 9.5 million
Season 6: 10.6 million
Season 7: 13.7 million
“Game of Thrones” airs Sundays at 9/8c on HBO.