There are always a few series and movie adaptations coming out into the market based on video games. However, most often than not, these adaptations are rather lacking and fail to hit the expectation of veteran fans or capture the interests of newcomers. Fortunately, the same can’t be said for HBO’s adaptation of The Last of Us. The video game series from Naughty Dog was already a massive hit for its narrative journey. Likewise, with Naughty Dog providing more of a cinematic experience with their games, the adaptation was likely rather easy to pull off. Fortunately, it looks like interest in this series is still at an all-time high.
Some new exciting numbers came out for HBO. It seems that the second episode for The Last of Us, titled “Infected,” was hit with a massive percentage of increase in viewership. It looks like the series found a spike increase of 22% for the series, which is the highest increase for an original HBO show. In particular, this is the highest increase from the original premiere episode to the second episode air. That’s quite the jump as well and shows that fans are eager to see how this story progresses. We’ll, of course, refrain from any spoilers for the story here.
With that said, even though the series has seen a spike from the premiere episode, it’s not the most accurate number right now. It’s noted that HBO has found that the actual date of the episode release typically only represents about 20% to 40% of the actual total audience gross. Instead, there is likely way more viewers jumping onto the episode later on in the week when they have the time to sit back and watch. So we’ll likely see some more impressive numbers come out for that particular episode as we head into the weekend, where we’ll get the next thrilling episode release.
So far, the reception has been quite popular. We already know that the first season of this series will be following the narrative of the first The Last of Us video game. As a result, we could likely expect the second season to follow the events of the sequel game if not provide more narrative between the events of the first game and the sequel. Regardless, fans who have yet to check out this series so far can check out the premiere and its second episode right now through HBO.