“The Iron Throne” was watched by 13.6 million people in direct broadcast – Sunday, May 19 – and became the most watched episode in the history of the TV network. The record belonged to the first episode of season 4 of The Sopranos (13.4 million views).
The second most watched GoT episode was the previous one – Episode 5, The Bells – which marked 12.5 million viewers (HBO Go and HBO Now raised the audience of episodes 5 and 6 in the series to 18.4, respectively 19.3 million). The lowest rating of season 8 was played by Episode 2, Knight of the Seven Kingdoms (10.3 million).
As expected, the 8th GoT was also the most discussed. Fans have expressed a great deal of dissatisfaction with the way the directors chose to end the show, and over a million of them even signed a petition to get it back.
Sophie Turner, Sansa Stark’s performer in the series, described their initiative as “a lack of respect” to all those who “worked hard” in this last season. Even if the film critics were not too excited about the end of the series, unanimous opinion can be summed up by CNN’s Brian Lowry words: “It was by no means the best season of Game of Thrones, but it is far from could be considered the disaster that one and the others are demanding. “
