HBO’s Game of Thrones, episode 3, The Long Night may have broken records for being the most-watched episode in the series, it is ironically also the lowest ranked of this season. The episode was also the longest in series history at 1 hour, 22 minutes.
Sunday’s big-battle episode, the third of the final season, drew approximately 17.8 million viewers either live on the network, streamed, on-demand or in a rerun that aired later that night, the Nielsen company said.
That made it the week’s most-watched show cable or broadcast and the most-watched one-day event ever in HBO’s four decades of existence, topping the Game of Thrones season eight premiere, which had 17.4 million viewers.
The numbers for Sunday’s episode are likely to grow considerably after delayed and repeat viewings. HBO said 38 million people have now watched the season eight premiere.
The May 19 series finale is expected to break all records.
However, interestingly, the episode scored 78 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. This score, taken from 87 reviews, is the lowest on record since season five, and the third lowest score in the history of the epic fantasy series. 78 percent may be considered to be a respectable score, but GoT episodes get an average 94 percent.
The worst rated Game of Thrones episode of all time was episode six from season five, Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken, which scored 54 percent.
