Love for HBO's The Last of Us adaptation is becoming contagious, after viewership for the series increased 12% when the third episode aired this weekend, according to Variety. 6.4 million people tuned in to watch the latest chapter of the show, titled 'Long, Long Time', on Sunday night. The episode took a small detour from following Joel (Pedro Pascal) and Ellie's (Bella Ramsey) journey, by introducing a couple of new characters caught up in the cordyceps disaster, Bill (Nick Offerman) and Frank (Murray Bartlett). The pair meet when Frank wanders into Bill's property while looking for shelter, prompting a romantic bond to develop between the two.
The Last of Us has created a strong audience for itself ever since its premiere earlier this month, which already generated plenty of engagement online. 4.7 million people tuned in for the series' debut, eager to find out more about Pascal's latest role as a reluctant father figure who must protect an important, abandoned youngling. A week after that, viewership rose up to 5.7 million people, when Joel, Ellie, and Tess (Anna Torv) fought against infected people while trapped in a desolate museum. The metrics are obtained through a combination of Nielsen's data for cable airings and Warner Bros.' reports for streaming through HBO Max.
Those numbers only refer to the night each episode aired, not accounting for people who got caught up with the series throughout the rest of the week. The increasing demand for The Last of Us, which already got renewed for a second season, is even more impressive when compared to similar HBO hits that were released during the last year. House of the Dragon, the acclaimed Game of Thrones spinoff starring Emma D'Arcy and Matt Smith, was already looking at a small decrease in viewership by the time its third episode aired. HBO currently has four original series averaging more than 15 million viewers per episode: The Last of Us (29 million), House of the Dragon (21.3 million), Euphoria (19.5 million), and The White Lotus (15.5 million).
While the show focused on the Targaryen family still managed to reach several million people with each episode it released, it remains to be seen if The Last of Us can go beyond those numbers, given the constant growth of its audience. The Last of Us is an adaptation of a PlayStation-exclusive video game released in 2013, telling the story of Joel and Ellie trying to survive the zombie apocalypse that began after the cordyceps fungus mutated and infected most of the world's population.
New episodes of the television adaptation will air on HBO and HBO Max every Sunday night until March 12. Check out a trailer for episode 4 below: