‘Succession’ Ends on a Ratings High With 2.9 Million Finale Viewers

There was no real winner at the end of Succession, if you ask series star Matthew Macfadyen. But HBO might be able to claim that title for itself.

2.9 million people tuned into Succession on Sunday night, when HBO and Max debuted the series finale after four seasons. This marks the shows largest audience ever, a 5% improvement from its previous record of 2.75 million viewers set by Episode 6 of Season 4, which aired on April 30.

Episode 10s new series high is an unsurprising cap on what has been the most watched season of Succession, which is now averaging 8.7 million viewers per episode when accounting for delayed viewing. (Season 3 averaged 7.2 million viewers.) Season 4 opened with a then-series high of 2.3 million viewers, up 33% from the Season 3 finales 1.7 million. Episode 2 was watched by 2 million, followed by 2.5 million with Episode 3, 2.6 million with Episode 4 and and 2.6 million again with Episode 5. Variety understands that after hitting 2.75 million with Episode 6, viewership remained mostly steady through Episode 9.

These figured are reported by HBO parent company Warner Bros. Discovery and represent a combination of Nielsens measurement of linear viewers on HBOs cable channel plus WBDs own data regarding streams on Max.

Succession wasnt the only HBO series to end its run on Sunday night. Barry drew in 700,000 viewers with its series finale, which debuted immediately following the Succession finale.

Barry wasnt able to reach any series highs throughout the run of its fourth season though it should be noted that setting a new record would have been a difficult feat, since the previous series high was set in 2019 and benefitted from lead-in from the series finale of Game of Thrones, HBOs most watched show of all time.

Season 4 opened with two episodes: Episode 1 reached 710,000 viewers and Episode 2 reached 550,000. Episode 3 was watched by 660,000 before the season hit its high of 779,000 viewers with Episode 4. Data regarding viewership of Episodes 5 through 7 is unavailable.

When accounting for delayed viewing, WBD reports that Barry is averaging 3.4 million viewers across episodes of Season 4, and that viewership of the final episode the day after its debut was 20% more than usual.