Corlys Velaryon's fleet may lie in ruin in the waters of the Gullet, but House of the Dragon season 3's prospects are looking bright. Today HBO's parent company Warner Bros. Discovery released viewership numbers for the first three days after the season 3 premiere, "Sea and Salt, Fire and Blood," rocked viewers with its epic medieval fantasy warfare, political scheming, unnerving Targaryen family dysfunction, and sprawling cast of characters spread across Westeros. And the results are more than they seem at first glance.
According to Deadline, the House of the Dragon season 3 premiere drew in 21.5 million viewers over its first three days on HBO and HBO Max. That's an 8% drop from the season 2 premiere, which netted 23.4 million viewers.
Yet while a decline in viewership might seem like a bad thing, the reality for House of the Dragon is much more encouraging. It's typical for television shows to drop viewership between seasons, especially in our current era of prestige television where two years between seasons has become the norm. So this was expected by HBO.
By contrast, the House of the Dragon season 2 premiere also represented a drop from season 1. The data there is slightly different but still telling; over its first day of availability, the season 2 premiere brought in 7.8 million viewers, down from 10 million for the season 1 premiere in August, 2022.
It's hard to be certain given the level of discretion large corporations with streaming platforms have for representing their data, but it seems as though House of the Dragon season 3 stands to have a smaller dip than the series got between its first two seasons.
Perhaps even more importantly, WBD claims that weekly viewing numbers for House of the Dragon season 2 tripled during the lead up to the season 3 premiere. This bodes well for rewatches as well as new viewers coming on board to the series. In addition, the show's first season has amassed an average of 92.2 million lifetime viewers per episode.
House of the Dragon viewership is growing stronger over time
To me, this data seems to indicate that House of the Dragon is not only here to stay, but growing a more robust fanbase over the course of its run. We still have a fourth and final season ahead. If the show features more sequences as spectacular as the Battle of the Gullet or as poignant as season 1's final walk to the Iron Throne for Viserys Targaryen, rewatches will only spike again in two years as the show reaches its endgame.
Game of Thrones was a series people loved to rewatch. It's a sign of House of the Dragon's success at claiming its place as the original show's heir that it's fostering the same sort of passionate audience that returns again and again, reliving its exultant cinematic highs and harrowing emotional lows. We'll see how the numbers shake out for the rest of its eight-episode run, but for now House of the Dragon season 3 is off to a strong start on several fronts.
New episodes of House of the Dragon debut Sundays on HBO and HBO Max. Follow our full coverage of the series here.
Add us as a preferred source on Google