This weekend’s new episode of The Last of Us was the most terrifying yet. Over the course of an hour, Ellie (Bella Ramsey) had to fight her way free from a terrifying group of cannibalistic survivors. Beyond being a very faithful adaptation of The Last of Us video game, “When We Are In Need” had huge ramifications for our characters ahead of next week’s finale.
Clearly it went over well with viewers, as HBO has announced that the episode set a new viewership high for the series with over 8.1 million people tuning in to watch on Sunday night. That number includes both linear viewing and streaming on HBO Max. This represents a 74% increase over The Last of Us series premiere in January.
The Last of Us viewership numbers just keep going up
This announcement comes hot on the heels of Nielsen revealing that The Last of Us racked up a billion minutes watched in the week after the release of Episode 3, “Long, Long Time.” A lot of the numbers are still filtering in, but HBO estimates that the show’s first five episodes are reaching around 30 million viewers on average across all platforms. “When We Are In Need” also marks the eighth consecutive week that The Last of Us was the number one show on HBO Max.
We’ve said it before, we’ll say it again: HBO has a hit on their hands. Here’s hoping that leads to more resources for the show’s second season, which series star Pedro Pascal (Joel) says could begin filming later this year.
The season 1 finale of The Last of Us airs this Sunday at 9:00 p.m. EST/8:00 p.m. CST on HBO and HBO Max.
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