The journey to Winterfell was a grand one indeed for HBO. It was a safe assumption that the Season 8 premiere, and the show's final season, would be big. As it turns out, it wasn't just big, it was record shattering.
In a press release from HBO, they announced that 17.4 million viewers watched the Season 8 premiere. That is a record for HBO, topping the Season 7 finale which saw 16.9 million viewers. Not only that, but HBO Now saw a 50% jump in viewers compared to last season's finale. Bottom line, it was the biggest streaming night for HBO ever. I know that some fans on Twitter were concerned about rumors of problems with the stream, but clearly this didn't do anything to hurt the numbers. As a matter of fact, HBO also pointed out that they are still in a dispute with Dish Network, so those numbers actually could have been even higher.
As far as social media was concerned, the Season 8 premiere was tweeted about more than any other Game of Thrones episode in history. If you look, you will probably still see a few things trending from the episode. When something is still trending, and trending high, more than 24 hours after the fact, you know you have something pretty special. I'd say 5 million tweets and 11 million mentions is a fairly successful trend.
Our SPOILER FILLED review of the Season 8 premiere will be coming up on Episode 261 of our podcast this week. Keep checking back for more details, and listen to the episode when it is released on Friday. Until then, what did you think of the Season 8 premiere of Game of Thrones?