The Last of Us Finale Nearly Doubles Its Audience From Premiere

The results are in: HBO’s The Last of Us continues to bring in huge numbers, as last night’s season finale brought in 75% more viewers than the season premiere.

Episode 9 drew in 8.2 million viewers for its Sunday premiere, which marks a 3.5 million increase over Episode 1, which drew 4.7 million viewers. The Last of Us saw growth every single week across its nine-episode run, with the exception of Episode 5’s 11.6 million outlier that includes data from Friday through Sunday. The show had some stiff competition over the last few weeks, going head-to-head with the Super Bowl and the Oscars.

HBO says the series averaged 30.4 million viewers across the first six episodes, with the season premiere approaching 40 million viewers in the U.S. alone. The Last of Us is also HBO Max’s most-watched show ever in Europe and Latin America.

The Last of Us hit the ground running in January and only grew stronger from there, opening to HBO’s second-best debut of the last decade. Partway through the season, The Last of Us was outpacing House of the Dragon’s viewership, with the largest week two audience growth for any HBO drama leading to a swift Season 2 renewal.

Following last night’s season finale, the hype train is already rolling for The Last of Us Season 2. The next season will begin adapting Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us Part II, and showrunner Craig Mazin has said the second game is “more than a season’s worth of television.” Mazin and executive producer Neil Druckmann have also teased that Season 2 will be “radically different” from the game at times, and that we could see more infected than in Season 1.

For more, check out our Last of Us season finale review and our ending explained. And, don’t miss our Episode 9 TV show vs game comparison, and how the finale confirmed a major Last of Us fan theory.

Logan Plant is a freelance writer for IGN covering video game and entertainment news. He has over six years of experience in the gaming industry with bylines at IGN, Nintendo Wire, Switch Player Magazine, and Lifewire. Find him on Twitter @LoganJPlant.