HBO’s The Last Of Us is picking up steam as it heads towards the season finale, with 8.1 million viewers tuning in for episode 8 on HBO Max and linear telecasts, Deadline reports. The figure is 74% higher than the series’ debut episode in January, and set a new viewership record for the show.
Based off the PlayStation game of the same name, The Last Of Us has been HBO Max’s top title for all eight weeks since it first premiered. With a massive premiere under its belt, becoming HBO’s second largest season one premiere after House of the Dragon, the show only increased in popularity, regularly beating its own viewership numbers in the following weeks.
This is the first time HBO has updated its viewership numbers for The Last Of Us in about a month, after being interrupted by a schedule change caused by the Super Bowl. HBO’s silence led some to speculate that the later episodes weren’t performing as well, though Nielsen data released around the same time showed that the show had reached a new milestone of topping 1 billion hours streamed in a single week.