‘House of the Dragon’ Debut Brings in BIG Numbers – Beats ‘Stranger Things’
The House of the Dragon debut on Sunday brought in record breaking viewership numbers, exceeding expectations and extinguishing concerns.
When news started coming out about the new series there was a worry that viewership would suffer after the Game of Thrones finale. Well, that concern didn’t pan out. HBO reports that the first episode brought in 9.986 million viewers on HBOMax and HBO on Sunday. This makes it the largest series premiere in HBO history – even bigger than GoT, which had 2.22 million viewers for its pilot. It drew more than twice the same day viewers as Stranger Things S4:V1.
Balerion would be proud.
Photograph by Ollie Upton, via HBO
House of the Dragon Debut Numbers vs. Reviews
The folks at HBO are super happy about the numbers. From Deadline:
“HBO has once again tapped into the magic of Game of Thrones with its spinoff series, House of the Dragon. Diehard GoT fans have been eagerly anticipating more from the franchise and they turned out in force for House of the Dragon, with the HBO program generating the biggest single-day premium cable or streaming viewership premiere in 2022. More than doubling initial same-day viewership of Netflix’s Season 4 premiere of Stranger Things, the Game of Thrones prequel recaptured the fire of HBO’s original masterpiece in a big way.”
Reviews are mixed. Some are glad to be back in Westeros, some are calling the first episode boring. Abe is our resident expert, so check out his review. Personally, I think it needs more velociraptors and fewer people. Seriously though, I really hope Rhys Ifans gets to do more so Matt Smith doesn’t eat the entire series. It would also be lovely not to have an episode that includes gratuitous violence toward women.
Or it could just have more velociraptors in fancy dress.
House of the Dragon S01E01 -but with a Velociraptor pic.twitter.com/0FZRAZwIbc
— But With Raptors (@ButWithRaptors) August 22, 2022
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