HBO and HBO Max’s video game adaptation “The Last of Us” was already a massive hit right out of the gate, but the show’s viewership is only growing even stronger in week two.
While “The Last of Us” debuted with 4.7 million day-of viewers for its premiere episode last week, this past Sunday night’s second episode pulled in a whopping 5.7 million viewers!
Geoff Keighley (The Game Awards) notes on Twitter, “This marks the largest week 2 audience growth for an HBO Original drama series in the history of the network.”
This number represents the Sunday night total between HBO and HBO Max, and Sunday night viewership only represents 20%-40% of a show’s total gross audience per episode.
For example, the premiere episode is currently up to 18 million total viewers!
For the sake of comparison, AMC’s “The Walking Dead” posted similar live viewer numbers in its debut season, with Season 1 viewership ranging from 4.71 million to a high of 5.97 million.
Needless to say, it’s VERY likely that we’ll be getting a second season of “The Last of Us” in the near future. From what we gather, the plan is for Season 2 to adapt the second game.
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”) is starring in the series as Joel and Bella Ramsey (“Game of Thrones”) is playing Ellie. Gabriel Luna (Terminator: Dark Fate) is playing 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 will also star in the series.
Craig Mazin (“Chernobyl”) developed the series for HBO, and worked directly alongside Neil Druckmann to write and executive produce the small screen adaptation.
