The Last of Us TV show debuted this week on HBO and HBO Max, and the show is already one of the most watched on the network. It had the second highest-watched HBO premiere behind the mega-hit House of the Dragon from 2022. As reported by Variety, over 4.7 million viewers watched The Last of Us last Sunday both on HBO and HBO Max. House of the Dragon’s first episode got over 9.3 million viewers. This is to be expected since the show is a prequel to the very popular Game of Thrones.
Viewership for The Last of Us continued over the week as the show garnered 10 million viewers across only two days. Viewership is expected to continue to grow as word of mouth spreads on how good the show is.
The Last of Us is already getting tons of praise from both critics and audiences alike. On Rotten Tomatoes, the critic score is 99% while the audience score is a respectable 96%. It is so far the best-rated TV show in 2023.
Over on IMDB, the show has beaten Breaking Bad as the highest-rated TV show of all time. The first episode has a user rating of 9.4/10 based on well over 58,000 viewers from around the world.
Unlike Paramount’s Halo and Netflix’s Resident Evil shows, The Last of Us actually follows the story of the video game quite closely. The casting of the show is pretty accurate too as Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey respectively play Joel and Ellie very well.
It will be interesting to see if the rest of the first season holds up very well. With success like this already, HBO could be preparing for season 2 very soon.
