Game of Thrones is going out with a bang, both with its explosive, conclusive plotting, and with its ratings: 12 million viewers watched the April 28 episode in its 9 p.m. airing (a season high) and 17.8 million cumulative viewers watched the show in its two airings on HBO plus the network's streaming platforms, HBO Go and HBO Now. The audience of 17.8 million marked a series high for its same-night gross audience.
Game of Thrones' Season 8 premiere had drawn HBO's previous series high with 17.4 million same-night viewers. That number for the premiere has now grown to 38 million viewers across all of HBO's platforms (and counting).
The third of the season's six episodes, "The Long Night," featured the much-anticipated Battle of Winterfell, in which the armies united under Daenerys Targaryen and Jon Snow fought the Night King and his Army of the Dead.
A lot of characters died — though perhaps not as many as anticipated — and Arya Stark saved the day by killing the Night King.
There are only three episodes left of Game of Thrones, which for years now has been the most watched show on television.
Since its April 14 premiere, each episode has been an event — particularly on social media — and has brought live audiences together on a scale we may never see again.
Next week, the battle against Cersei begins.