The Last of Us

‘The Last of Us’ second-best HBO premiere in thirteen years behind ‘Dragon House’

The first episode of ‘The Last of Us’, the television adaptation of the popular video game of the same name, has just premiered on HBO Max. Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey play Joel and Ellie in a story set in an apocalyptic United States where zombies and various dangers lurk in the dark. What was undoubtedly lurking behind the first episode was a huge expectation due to the great fame and prestige enjoyed by the video game.

The Last of Us
HBO

Such interest has been reflected in the numbers generated by ‘The Last of Us’ on its premiere day. As reported by audience measurement leader Nielsen and data shared by Warner Bros. Discovery, the series debut is HBO’s second-best in 13 years, surpassed only by ‘The Dragon House’ spinoff ‘Game of Thrones’. Between the HBO Max streaming platform and the HBO channel, 4.7 million viewers in the U.S. have turned on their TVs or devices to watch the first episode of ‘The Last of Us’ on the day of its release. It should be noted that this feat is counted since after the 2010 premiere of ‘Boardwalk Empire’, which gathered 4.8 million viewers.

During these 13 years famous house series have premiered such as the mythical ‘Game of Thrones’, which had 4.2 million viewers its first day, ‘True Detective’, ‘The Leftovers’, ‘Westworld’, ‘Silicon Valley’, ‘Veep’, ‘Succession’, ‘Euphoria’ and ‘Chernobyl’, but only the first episode of ‘The Dragon House’, which gathered 9.99 million viewers in the United States, has better figures than that of ‘The Last of Us’. Comparing it to ‘Euphoria,’ HBO’s other big current series besides the ‘Game of Thrones’ spinoff, the debut of the series starring Pascal and Ramsey practically doubled the numbers generated by episode one of ‘Euphoria’ season two (2.4 million).