The Last of Us doesn’t look like it’ll be losing steam any time soon. On Sunday, 6.4M people tuned in to watch the third episode of the post-apocalyptic series across HBO and HBO Max, according to Nielsen and first party data.
That’s a 12% increase from last week’s viewership, which already had set a record for the largest week 2 audience growth for an HBO Original drama series in the history of the network. Sunday’s audience is also up 37% from the series premiere, which was watched same-day by 4.7M people.
It only took two episodes for HBO to renew the series for a second season. It was an expected movie, considering the first episode scored the second-largest premiere after House of the Dragon since Boardwalk Empire’s launch in 2010.
RELATED: ‘The Last Of Us’ Causes Linda Ronstadt’s ‘Long, Long Time’ To Surge In Streams On Spotify
The first two episodes of The Last of Us are averaging 21.3M viewers. With that, HBO now has four current series that have cross-platform audiences averaging more than 15M viewers per episode. This marks the first time HBO has had multiple current series drawing more than 15M viewers at a time across all genres.
House of the Dragon Season 1 is the top performer, averaging 29M viewers per episode. The Last of Us comes in at a close second with 21.3M. Euphoria Season 2 is averaging 19.5M per episode, and The White Lotus is up to 15.5M.
The Last of Us, which is based on the PlayStation game, takes place 20 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 journey as they both must traverse the US and depend on each other for survival.
It stars Pascal, Bella Ramsey, Gabriel Luna, Anna Torv, Nico Parker, Murray Bartlett and Nick Offerman as well as Melanie Lynskey, Storm Reid, Merle Dandridge, Jeffrey Pierce, Lamar Johnson, Keivonn Woodard, Graham Greene, Elaine Miles, Ashley Johnson and Troy Baker.