“The Last of Us” Just Hit New Series High Viewership With 8.1 Million Day-One Viewers

HBO’s “The Last of Us” just keeps getting better with each passing week, and the viewership also continues to rise. Ahead of the season finale this coming Sunday night, Bloody Disgusting has learned that last night’s penultimate episode drew in a HUGE amount of viewers.

Across HBO Max and linear telecasts, “The Last of Us” Episode 8 drew in 8.1 million viewers, which is a new series high for the hit horror show. As we always make sure to note, Sunday night viewership only represents 20%-40% of a show’s total gross audience per episode.

Deadline reports, “The Last of Us was also the top title overall on HBO Max for the 8th consecutive week, with all episodes ranking among the week’s top 10 individual assets. The average audience for the series’ first five episodes is now approaching 30 million viewers across all platforms, according to HBO.”

Back in January, the series premiere of “The Last of Us” debuted to 4.7 million day-one viewers, which means the show’s audience has nearly DOUBLED in the past several weeks.

Don’t miss the season finale this Sunday. And yes, a second season is coming soon!

HBO’s “The Last of Us” takes place twenty years after modern civilization has been destroyed. Joel, a hardened survivor, is hired to smuggle Ellie, a 14-year-old girl, out of an oppressive quarantine zone. What starts as a small job soon becomes a brutal, heartbreaking journey, as they both must traverse across the U.S. and depend on each other for survival.

Pedro Pascal (“The Mandalorian”) stars in the series as Joel and Bella Ramsey (“Game of Thrones”) plays Ellie. Gabriel Luna (Terminator: Dark Fate) plays Tommy, the brother of Pascal’s Joel. Storm Reid, Anna Torv, Jeffrey Pierce, Nick Offerman, Merle Dandridge, Nico Parker, Murray Bartlett and Con O’Neil also star in the first season of the hit series.

Craig Mazin (“Chernobyl”) developed the series for HBO, and worked directly alongside Neil Druckmann to write and executive produce the small screen adaptation.