Roughly 13.7 million live viewers tuned in to watch Drogon burn down the Iron Throne for no reason in the finale of Game of Thrones in 2019. Three years later, the first of hopefully many spin-offs, House of the Dragon, premiered and proved that people remain just as hungry to watch people fight over a throne made out of several hundred sticks with pointy ends.
After much anticipation, House of the Dragon delivered its first episode and it's safe to say people tuned in to see if it was worth all the hype. Although the show's quality is subjective - for what it's worth, the consensus is House of the Dragon is off to an excellent start - the numbers don't lie.
HBO claims that the Game of Thrones spinoff posted historic numbers as nearly 10 million viewers (9.986 million, to be exact) watching House of the Dragon on both the cable networks and HBO Max in the United States. In addition to this, HBO revealed that the premiere of House of the Dragon brought renewed interest in the original series as the streaming numbers of Game of Thrones spiked during the months of July and August.
Audiences still haven't forgiven David Benioff and D. B. Weiss for what they did to the last two to three seasons of Game of Thrones. To make matters worse, George R.R. Martin went out and admitted that he had little to nothing to do with Game of Thrones anymore except for creating the source material. But, the good news is that Martin is more heavily involved this time around.
