after handling clickers, cannibalsAnd devastating heartbreakThe award ceremony was nothing but a mere gala for Ellie and Joel, the last survivors. The season finale of “The Last of Us” drew 8.2 million viewers Sunday night across HBO Max and linear-HBO, a new series despite being scheduled against the 95th Academy Awards airing on ABC.
“The Last of Us” finale debuts at 9 p.m. on HBO and HBO Max; The Oscars began at 8 p.m. ET and ended shortly after at 11:30 p.m. ET on ABC. We don’t have Oscar numbers — yet — but ABC hopes it did even better than “The Last of Us.” The 2022 Academy Awards attracted 16.6 million viewers (although the earliest available data for the event showed 13.7 million); The 2021 Oscars had an all-time low of 10.5 million viewers.
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in “The Last of Us” enjoyed consistently strong viewership during its nine-episode first season. The show’s previous high number was 8.1 million viewers for the previous week’s final episode, “When We’re in Need”.
The Oscars aren’t the first major event that “The Last of Us” has competed in during its short lifespan: Episode 4 (7.5 million viewers) aired alongside the 65th Annual Grammy Awards, and HBO aired Episode 5 (11.6 million viewers). carried forward. Friday–Sunday) so as not to compete with the Super Bowl, which is television’s most watched telecast each year. (The Academy Awards were traditionally No. 2.)
“The Last of Us” debuted in January 4.7 million viewersIt is the second most watched premiere for HBO since 2010, behind “Game of Thrones” spinoff “House of the Dragon”. Coincidentally, “The Last of Us” is also “Thrones,” in which the show’s leads Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey have both served as cast members during its eight seasons on the George R.R. Martin fantasy series.
The Sunday season finale, titled “Look for the Light”, received positive reviews from critics upon its Sunday airing. in his write up For IndieWire, critic Ben Travers gave the episode an “A-” rating and described it as a “devastating inversion of what we expected from the ending”.
Based on the 2013 PlayStation video-game franchise from Naughty Dog, “The Last of Us” comes to HBO from the game’s original creator Neil Druckmann, who co-stars with “Chernobyl” creator Craig Mazin. Future seasons will adapt “The Last of Us Part II”, which released in 2020 and follows main characters Joel and Ellie four years after their first adventure.
Along with Pascal and Ramsey, Season 1 of “The Last of Us” also stars Merle Dandridge, Anna Torv, Gabriel Luna, Nick Offerman, Murray Bartlett, Storm Reid, Melanie Lynskey, Lamar Johnson, Kevon Montreal Woodard, Nico Parker, Jeffrey Pearce were involved. , Rutina Wesley and Scott Shepherd. Troy Baker and Ashley Johnson, who played Joel and Ellie in the original games, also appeared (as different characters) in the series.
Mazin and Druckmann executive produce for HBO with Caroline Strauss, Evan Wells, Assad Qizilbash, Carter Swan and Rose Lamm. Sony Pictures Television co-produces the series with HBO; PlayStation Productions, Word Games, The Mighty Mint and Naughty Dog serve as additional production companies.
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