Every Episode Of ‘House Of The Dragon’ Is Averaging Nearly 30 Million Viewers

Remember when people, myself included, wondered if House of the Dragon would be a hit after the lackluster (to put it mildly) final season of Game of Thrones Yeah, about that: the prequel series is averaging 29 million viewers an episode, per a Variety report.

That’s basically the entire population of Venezuela tuning in every week, or bigger ratings than the queen’s funeral got in the U.K. All hail the one true queen (Syrax).

“Episode one was watched by nearly 10 million people across all platforms when it debuted, while episode two reached 10.2 million,” according to Variety. “Episode four’s viewership picked up by 5 percent across all by platforms, and with episode five‘s three present jump, it appears that the series has now hit a retention rate that is likely to remain stable as season one continues.” The extra viewership — leaping from 10 million to 29 million — comes from those who got around to watching later in the week:

These statistics combine Nielsen’s measurement of episode five’s four cable airings on Sunday with the number of streaming viewers across HBO Max and other HBO platforms. When isolating linear viewership, according to Nielsen, 2.576 million people tuned into the episode on HBO itself, a 4 percent increase when compared to last week’s 2.474 million cable viewers.

The real test of House of the Dragon‘s popularity comes with episode six, when the show jumps forward in time. But don’t worry, the dragons are still there.