As if we needed more evidence that HBO has stumbled into a hit with zombie apocalypse series The Last of Us, Nielsen's latest weekly ranker shows that comparing first full weeks, the series January debut significantly outperformed the August premiere of Game of Thrones spinoff series House of the Dragon.
The Last of Us premiered January 15, and for the week of Jan. 16 - 22, Nielsen said the show garnered 847 million streaming minutes in the U.S.
Premiering with a ton of more hype and viewer awareness back on August 21, House of the Dragon drew 741 million U.S. streaming minutes from August 22-28, Nielsen said. (Hat tip to Vulture's Josef Adalian for first noticing this and tweeting it out Thursday night.)
The Last of Us has been progressively building its audience since its debut, delivering a same-day cross-platform viewership of 7.5 million watchers for its fourth episode back on Feb. 5. That represented 60% audience growth from that impressive debut episode.
The Sony Pictures TV series, which stars Pedro Pascal sans his Madalorian armor, has already been renewed for a second season.
We could go on and on, filling this short audience ratings story with useless logline information that you probably already know, don't care about and can get by visiting many other places on the internet. We're better than that. And you deserve better. So we're going to end it right here.
