House Of The Dragon's Premiere Posted Jaw-Dropping Numbers
When it comes to highly anticipated television shows, HBO's "House of the Dragon" is right at the top of the list. The series serves as a prequel to "Game of Thrones," which consistently pulled in extremely high ratings and became a pop culture phenomenon. The finale for that show, titled "The Iron Throne," pulled in a massive viewing audience of 19.3 million viewers (per CNN), which is an incredible number for a premium cable network. Obviously, this was going to put some serious pressure on "House of the Dragon" to perform well.
Still, the critical and fan reception for the final season of "Game of Thrones" wasn't exactly stellar by any means. "The Iron Throne," which served as the series finale for "Game of Thrones," garnered a not-great 47% critic rating on Rotten Tomatoes while Season 8 as a whole hit an underwhelming 33% from viewers. "House of the Dragon," despite its parent show's popularity, was always going to be something of a risk for HBO. Well, it seems as if that risk has paid off — at least for now — as the new prequel series has just posted some truly remarkable viewership numbers for its premiere episode.
House of the Dragon's premiere pulled in around 10 million viewers
According to The Hollywood Reporter, "House of the Dragon" premiere episode, titled "The Heirs of the Dragon," pulled in nearly 10 million viewers when accounting for all of its viewing platforms. This means that the "Game of Thrones" prequel series is the most-watched series premiere of all time for HBO, which is obviously a monumental achievement. It was also the biggest launch ever for HBO Max, though exact viewing numbers for the streaming app have not yet been released.
It'll be interesting to see how "House of the Dragon" maintains this level of momentum over the coming weeks, but if it performs similarly to "Game of Thrones," those numbers have nowhere to go but up. Given that the show has been much better received than the final season of "Game of Thrones," with a solid 82% critics score and a very good 88% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, it's clear that fans are impressed with what they've seen thus far. Either way, it's clear that the underwhelming response to the final season of "Game of Thrones" hasn't really dulled interest in the world of Westeros like some had feared it would.