‘The Last Of Us’ Episode 8 Draws 8.1 Million Viewers For New Series High

HBO’s penultimate episode 8 of The Last Of Us delivered 8.1 million viewers Sunday night across HBO Max and linear telecasts. That’s up 74% from the series debut night in January and sets a new series high ahead of next Sunday’s season finale, per Nielsen and HBO.

The Last Of Us was also the top title overall on HBO Max for the 8th consecutive week, with all episodes ranking among the week’s top 10 individual assets. The average audience for the series’ first five episodes is now approaching 30 million viewers across all platforms, according to HBO.

The series, 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 U.S. and depend on each other for survival. 

This is the first time in about a month that HBO has released updated viewership metrics for The Last of Us. At the time, the series had hit a same-day high of 7.5M viewers. Episode 5 debuted early on HBO Max so as not to compete with the Super Bowl, so same-day numbers wouldn’t have been accurate.

According to Nielsen’s streaming charts, The Last of Us hit a milestone the week that Episode 5 debuted. The series was streamed for more than 1B minutes during the week of January 30 to February 5, which included just a few hours of availability for Episode 5. That doesn’t include linear viewing on HBO. Nielsen also doesn’t break down viewership by episode.

It stars Pedro 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.

The Last of Us is written and executive produced by Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann. It is a co-production with Sony Pictures Television along with PlayStation Productions, Word Games, The Mighty Mint and Naughty Dog. Carolyn Strauss, Evan Wells, Asad Qizilbash, Carter Swan, and Rose Lam also exec produce.