NEW YORK- The long-awaited return of hit fantasy series ‘Game of Thrones’ proved to be a milestone for HBO, which relished an all-time rating record. The Season 8 premiere scooped in more than 17 million viewers across live broadcast and streaming platforms, reported Entertainment Weekly.
The episode topped the 16.1 million who saw the seventh-season premiere and the 16.9 million who watched that season’s finale.
This was not only the highest turnout for any HBO show in history, but it also garnered the highest ratings of the year out from under CBS’s The Big Bang Theory, whose recent episodes raked in over 14 million viewers in early February.
Underscoring the intensity of fandom around the show, which had been on a nearly two-year break from the release, Sunday night’s audience total included 11.8 million viewers who watched live on TV, according to HBO, with another 50% of the overall audience streaming the premiere via HBO Now.
All of the top 10 global Twitter trends late Sunday evening was about the episode.
The most-tweeted moment from Sunday’s show came when popular Thrones character Jon Snow (played by Kit Harington) learned the truth about his parents and the fact that his love interest, Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke), is, in fact, his aunt(LOL!)
The final episode of Game of Thrones will air on May 19.
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