House of the Dragon Audience Rises in Week 2, on Heels of Quick Renewal
House of the Dragon opened its doors to even more people in Week 2, building on its record-setting premiere audience.
Episode 2 of the Game of Thrones prequel, titled “The Rogue Prince,” amassed 10.2 million viewers domestically across HBO Max and linear telecasts on Sunday night, marking a gain of two percent from the series premiere’s early tallies.
That series premiere audience, in fact, is now approaching 25 million viewers in the U.S., after one week of availability.
Nearly 10 million viewers (9.986 million to be exact) watched House of the Dragon’s Aug. 21 debut, marking the largest premiere audience for a new original series in pay cabler HBO’s history.
TVLine readers gave that much-ballyhooed premiere an average grade of “A-.“
Days later, HBO announced the fantasy saga’s Season 2 pickup.
“We are beyond proud of what the entire House of the Dragon team has accomplished with Season 1,” HBO Programming EVP Francesca Orsi said in a statement. “Our phenomenal cast and crew undertook a massive challenge and exceeded all expectations, delivering a show that has already established itself as must-see-TV. A huge thank you to [series co-creators] George [R.R. Martin], Ryan [Condal] and Miguel [Sapochnik] for leading us on this journey. We couldn’t be more excited to continue bringing to life the epic saga of House Targaryen with Season 2.”
Set two centuries before the events of the mothership series, House of the Dragon chronicles the fall of House Targaryen, pulling from Fire & Blood, a compendium written by George R. R. Martin that elaborates on the Targaryen family’s history. The major players of the show’s sizable cast include Paddy Considine as King Viserys Targaryen, Matt Smith as Prince Daemon Targaryen, Rhys Ifans as Otto Hightower, Emma D’Arcy as Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen and Olivia Cooke as Alicent Hightower.
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That great news. May it continue to break viewership records.
This actually surprises me… I figured the premiere would do gangbusters but some curiosity seekers would bow out in episode 2.
They heard it still had gratuitous female nudity, so they all came back…
There was no nudity in last nights show.
That’s funny, because I agree. But the opening for HBO said “brief nudity” and it wasn’t till after I thought, what nudity? Not sure it would fit anywhere in this episode, but I wondered if I blinked or something.
I’m not sure either, but as a long time viewer of HBO, from their earliest days, (and having watched ALL of Game of Thrones four times now) I’d say that they have to run that disclaimer before every episode due to the really graphic nature of some of the sex scenes! Like the de-penising of the accused raper during the brutality of the City Watch!
Well, they might not be back for episode three then…
In all seriousness though, there doesn’t seem to be a breakout character in this one. Not yet. They’re all a little dull. Maybe the crab-feeder will cure that.
I don’t know if he’s quite to breakout yet, but I find Matt Smith entertaining every time he’s on the screen in this. He’s really layering the character well. But I’d agree with you everyone else is somewhere between dull and not entirely gripping. So far at least. Few too many Bran and Sansa’s, not enough Cersei and Tyrion’s.
Reasonable guess. I wonder if two things happened. One the word of mouth was “hey, it doesn’t suck…yet” so it brought back a few who bowed out. And the fast renewal got a few more who were worried it’d just be another one season and done show so why bother? I guess 3, people could also have been not anxious to see it and got around to watching it during the week, and then liked it enough to tune in right away on Sunday for episode 2.
I just need to leave a few comments concerning the recent reviews and opinions of this young man’s take on House Of The Dragon.
First I will acknowledge that he’s seen much more than the rest of us, having seen six episodes to our two! With that said, I think the guy giving the show a B grade, just shows how inadequate he is at his job! This show has the largest viewing audience in HBO’s history! That’s really saying something! HBO has been offering the best shows I’ve ever seen (next to Star Trek of course!), in my 55 years of viewing television and cable both!
I was going to say the guy is an idiot, but decided that’s just not nice! But I do feel that he’s wrong!
I think the viewing public is a much better gauge of just how well the new series and HBO, is doing!
Thank you for your continuing reviews and views of our favorite shows! And thank you for caring, about what we the viewers think!