If you watched Sunday's The Last of Us premiere, you're in good company. The show drew in a very impressive 4.7 million viewers for its first episode, making it HBO's second-largest debut for a TV show since 2010. Here's hoping the rest of the show can keep up that viewership, eh?
According to Deadline, Sunday night's The Last of Us' viewing figures take into account both "linear" viewers (that's those who tuned into the show during its scheduled slot) and those who watched the show via HBO Max. The only debut to beat the show since 2010 is Game of Thrones spinoff House of the Dragon, which drew 9.986 million viewers when it premiered last year. Intriguingly enough, both Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey, who play the leads in The Last of Us, also starred in Game of Thrones (but not House of the Dragon).
Based on the hugely successful PlayStation franchise, The Last of Us revolves around Joel and Ellie, two survivors in a post-apocalyptic United States. Ellie appears to possess natural immunity to the Cordyceps fungus that has wiped out civilization, and so Joel must escort her across the US in order to potentially find a cure for the disease.
Like Netflix's Castlevania (and to a lesser extent movies like Sonic the Hedgehog and Detective Pikachu), The Last of Us appears to be bucking the "video game adaptation curse", wherein movies or TV shows adapted from video games turn out poorly. Critics and audiences alike are praising the show's dramatic heft and its closeness to the source material, although it remains to be seen whether that praise will be sustained throughout the show's run of eight more episodes.
You can check out The Last of Us right now on HBO Max. Right now, only the first episode is available, but new episodes will drop every week, so keep an eye out for them if you become as engrossed in this show as lots of other folks seem to be.
