House Of The Dragon was HBO’s biggest finale since the last Game Of Thrones finale (which was much, much bigge - The A.V. Club

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So ends another season of Game Of Thrones—er, House Of The Dragon.

While HBO closed the book Thrones with a handful of controversial and divisive episodes, House Of The Dragon resumed viewers to business as usual. With its flute playing joyful tunes of incest and dismemberment, HBO’s proverbial Pied Piper, House Of The Dragon, shepherded 9.3 million people to their TV screens to watch several children die.

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Per Variety, the number pleased HBO and Warner Bros. Discovery enough to release it, even though it paled in comparison to the Game Of Thrones finale in 2019. That episode, which, as we all remember, introduced the world to Bran the Broken, clocked in more than 18 million viewers. In fact, “The Black Queen” wasn’t even a season-best for House Of The Dragon. This season’s second episode had more than 10 million viewers.

So what does this tell us? Well, for one thing, at least a million fewer people watched last night than back in August. Does that mean House Of The Dragon is doomed? Probably. Who knows how many viewers HBO could lose next season to people being busy?

But in the meantime, it’s looking fine. HBO even told Variety that there were episode-to-episode gains. Across TV and streaming, viewership “rose by 5% with Episode 4, by 3% with Episode 5 and by another 3% with Episode 6.” However, Variety notes, “The company declined to share any information about viewership of episodes 7–9.” Could it be that people had enough of Daemon Targaryen’s fickle moral compass, Viserys’ decay, or the show’s penchant for sibling marriage? Maybe they were annoyed that there was yet another one of those episodes you can’t see. But, most likely, there were just some scheduling conflicts between HBO and the people who consume their content. One day, networks will be able to control us better, and we patiently await that day.

House Of The Dragon’s finale was bigger than the Thrones season one finale. Unfortunately, HBO’s first season capper garnered a pathetic 3.9 million, meaning Game Of Thrones is probably doomed. Still, they could probably save that show if they added a few more feet scenes.

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House Of The Dragon was HBO’s biggest finale since the last Game Of Thrones finale (which was much, much bigge - The A.V. Club
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