The season finale of House of the Dragon may have left some viewers underwhelmed, but a lot of them tuned in.
The HBO series drew its largest first-night audience of the season on Sunday with 8.9 million viewers across all platforms. That’s a 14 percent improvement over the season premiere in June and about 800,000 more viewers than the previous season best of 8.1 million for the season’s fourth installment.
HBO says season two as a whole has averaged 25 million viewers per episode, down from 29 million for House of the Dragon’s first season — though still among the biggest seasons for any HBO series since the conclusion of HotD’s predecessor, Game of Thrones.
A breakdown of Sunday’s audience by platform wasn’t immediately available, but it’s likely that most of the 8.9 million viewers came via streaming on Max. The season’s previous seven episodes averaged 1.25 million viewers for their first airings on HBO; even assuming a bit of a finale bump, it’s likely under 20 percent of the night’s total audience came from the on-air premiere. The rest is from streaming and replays on HBO after the initial showing.
Sunday’s episode also marked the apparent midpoint for House of the Dragon: Showrunner Ryan Condal told reporters Monday that the series will conclude after four seasons, with season three scheduled to begin production in early 2025.