‘The Last Of Us’ Finale Viewership Down 30% From Premiere, With Two Catches

The Last of Us season 2 ended its second season abruptly this weekend, with just seven episodes compared to season 1’s nine. It was so sudden that many viewers didn’t even realize it was the finale, and now we have some stats in that…do not look great.

The finale of The Last of Us season 2 saw a 30% drop in viewership compared to the season 2 premiere. It also dropped 55% from the season 1 finale.

Bad, quite bad on its face, but there are two caveats here that are worth exploring before alarms fully start going off.

• Memorial Day Weekend – The holiday had a lot of people heading out of town, and many may not have been around Sunday night to watch ahead of the Monday off work and school.
• Long Term – In the end, The Last of Us season 2 has in fact been averaging more viewers overall than season 1, once long-tail views are added over time. So, this should lower those percentage gaps in time, if not erase them.

Still, it’s probably not great to simply hand-wave this away given what’s happened with the show this season. You can still look at other reported figures, usually live viewing, for trends here.

The Last of Us season 1 almost doubled its viewership by its finale. It went up almost every week other than a big drop on Super Bowl weekend.

Season 1 also has three episodes above a million live viewers and season 2 has zero, indicating an overall trend even of post-live viewership is a huge factor now. And that’s even with almost double the viewers of the season 1 premiere to start with.

Viewership appears to have dropped sharply after the premiere, which was not actually Joel’s death episode, rather the next one was. But views were middling all season with no big increases seen over time like season 1 had. Even if it’s not 30% lower in the end, it seems possible, if not likely that it is lower than the premiere. Regardless, these trendlines are not great. Reasons for that?

• The Show Got Worse – By the end of season 2, I don’t think there’s a way to dispute that. Yes, certainly among game-players, but I’m not exactly seeing the enthusiasm among general audiences the way we did for season 1.
• A Rushed, Short Season – The whole way this show is now structured is bizarre. It’s trying to be like the games but at the same time, erasing key moments and now ending on this cliffhanger that will take 2+ years to resolve, and when the show comes back it will be without Joel or mostly Ellie with its Abby season. You could feel the annoying urgency jamming probably what should have been 10 episodes into 7.

I have more to say on this, but no, things have certainly not moved in a great direction in season 2 in a number of ways.