The Last of Us season finale broke its own viewership record, despite competing with the Oscars

The final episode of The Last of Us was the most-watched in the entire series, despite airing at the same time as the Oscars.

According to HBO parent company Warner Bros Discovery, the ninth and final episode, titled Look for the Light, got 8.2 million viewers for its initial airing across HBO Max and linear telecasts.

These are the highest ratings for the first airing of an episode in the series, breaking the 8.1 million reached by the previous episode.

The first episode delivered initial ratings of 4.7 million, followed by 5.7 million for episode 2 and 6.4 million for episode 3. The figure has continued to grow with each successive episode.

The company also claims that The Last of Us is now the most-watched show in the history of HBO Max in Europe and Latin America.

In the US, the show didn’t quite manage to hit the figures set by Game of Thrones spin-off House of the Dragon, even though its growth throughout the season was much higher.

As noted by Variety, episode 1 of House of the Dragon was viewed by 9.9 million people, followed by 10.2 million for episode 2, but by the time it reached its final episode the viewing figures were 9.3 million.

As Variety puts it, this means viewership of House of the Dragon decreased by 6.9% over the course of the series, compared to an increase of 75% for The Last of Us.

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These figures only refer to the show’s viewership during its first airing on Sunday night. Warner Bros notes that while the first episode got 4.7 million viewers during its debut night, that figure is now approaching 40 million in the US alone thanks to on-demand service HBO Max.

When subsequent viewings on demand are taken into account, House of the Dragon got an average of 29 million viewers per episode. It remains to be seen if The Last of Us can surpass this over time.

The Last of Us has already been renewed for a second season, and earlier this week co-creators Neil Druckmann and Craig Mazin seemingly confirmed their intention that a third season would be coming, by suggesting that season 2 wouldn’t be able to contain the entirety of The Last of Us Part II game.