HBO’s post-apocalyptic series The Last of Us has set a new viewership milestone. According to Nielsen data shared with Deadline, the series reached its first billion-minute week on HBO Max.
The Last of Us reached 1.2 billion minutes streamed from January 30-February 5. Of note, Nielsen’s streaming data only counts HBO Max streams in the US, not numbers from HBO’s linear TV channel or other sources.
While HBO was quick to boast about The Last of Us viewership numbers for episodes 1-4, the network stopped sharing numbers since then, presumably because they don’t look as good. It’s been reported that Episode 5 was the first to see a week-over-week decline in viewers. That could be because the episode clashed with the Super Bowl. It did stream two days early on HBO Max, however.
But the fact that HBO hasn’t provided any viewership numbers for The Last of Us since Episode 4 suggests, but doesn’t confirm, that numbers aren’t as strong as they used to be. That may be true, but The Last of Us remains a juggernaut.
The Nielsen data also states that The Last of Us is tracking similarly to AMC’s The Walking Dead with its audience geared toward younger people and men specifically.
The most-streamed piece of TV/film content for the week of January 30-February 5 based on minutes watched was Black Panther: Wakanda Forever with 2.3 billion minutes. Netflix’s movie You People ranked second with 1.5 billion minutes. The TV series New Amsterdam (1.3 billion) ranked third, with The Last of Us landing in fourth for the week with 1.2 billion minutes.
The next episode of The Last of Us airs this Sunday, March 5, and there is just one more episode to come after that before Season 1 wraps up. For more on the newest episode, check out GameSpot’s video above that digs into the Ellie and Riley flashback episode.
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