HBO’s season 6 premiere of Game of Thrones set a record for viewership of the series when including live streaming on the HBO Go and HBO Now platforms.
With 10.7 million people tuning into the Season 6 premiere of Game of Thrones, entitled “The Red Woman,” the show has hit a new high of 10.7 million when including all three airings of the show on HBO on Sunday, along with preliminary viewing numbers for streaming on HBO Go and HBO Now. Last year’s season premiere caught 9.8 million eyeballs, while the season finale hit a series high of 10.3 million viewers.
Entertainment Weekly reveals that the 10.7 million viewers who tuned in for The Red Woman do not include anyone who watched the show during HBO’s free preview weekend, which let non-subscribers watch the pay cable network for free.
Nielsen estimates that 7.944 million watched the 9 p.m. premiere telecast on Sunday, the third-largest linear audience to date for the show — a bit below both its year-ago premiere (7.997 million) and finale (8.112 million). But given that stand-alone streaming service HBO Now broke usage records on Sunday night, it’s a pretty safe bet that overall viewership for “The Red Woman” will set a single-telecast series record.
The first episode has been titled “The Red Woman,” which suggest it has something to do with Melisandre. Will she bring back Snow from death? A sneak peak of season six showed Khaleesi survived near-death experience after a fight with Meereen. She was also seen doing her walk of shame with the Dothrakis. Bran Stark, who the audience missed in the previous season, will be coming back. In one promo photo, Isaac Hempstead Wright’s character was seen standing next to the Three-Eyed Raven.
If Arya manages to get herself back to Westeros, there will be a possibility of Spark reunion this season. Sansa is heading north from Winterfell, knowing that her brothers Bran and Rickon are alive. If Sansa manages to run into Brienne in those snowy woods around Winterfell, she might find out that her sister, Arya, is also alive as well, Vanity Fair noted.
“The Red Woman” is written by David Benioff & D. B. Weiss, and is directed by Jeremy Podeswa.
There is one record that Game of Thrones didn’t manage to break, which HBO is certainly most grateful for. The show is still on track to be the most pirated TV show of the year, but unlike last year, the premiere didn’t break any torrent records. The network took new precautions this year, by not sending out early episodes to members of the press. Last year, the first four episodes of Season 5 leaked online, just one day before the season premiered on HBO.
There are some interesting variables in play with the Season 6 premiere. The episode leaked early on Sunday, but leaks didn’t seem to hurt the Season 5 premiere. This is also the first season of Game of Thrones will pull out ahead of George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire novels, on which the series is based, in terms of place in the narrative, though that only seemed to generate more excitement among fans. Judging by Rotten Tomatoes, “The Red Woman” received less positive reviews from critics than any previous Game of Thrones season premiere, though it’s 92 percent positive rating (compared to 97-100 percent for past premieres) is still more than enough for it to be “certified fresh.”