Just when everyone was starting to get over the atrocious Game of Thrones finale, HBO has enticed us with another royal saga to lure us back into the Game of Thrones Universe. The story of the infamous house that ruled over the Seven Kingdoms before Robert Baratheon and Ned Stark’s rebellion. The house whose people are closer to gods than men. The house that tamed the greatest power the world has seen – dragons. The house our Mother of Dragons – Daenerys Stormborn belonged to: House Targaryen or rather House of the Dragon. The series is a prequel to the events of Game of Thrones. The shows events are set 172 years before Daenerys Targaryen. The prequel focuses on King Viserys I’s rule. His inability to give the realm a male heir has rendered kingdom in a state unsurety.
His heir is to be decided between his brother Daemon Targaryen and his eldest daughter Rhaenyra Targaryen. On paper this seems to be the central conflict of the show, although as these events are taking place in Westeros things will never be simple. The show is based on another book of George R.R. Martin’s Fire and Blood. The pilot of the prequel became HBO’s biggest debut with gathering as much as 9.986 Million viewers in the first 24 hours. While many judged this success was simply an extension of the fan base that Game of Thrones has left behind but the follow-up episode proved everyone wrong. The second episode of the prequel out did the first when it comes to viewership numbers as there was a 2% growth.
Meaning not only did the show retain its audience but in fact added eyeballs. However, House of the Dragon third episode saw the show’s first linear viewership drop but that was only on cable. The prequel soared high on HBO Max with 16 Million viewers. Episode 4 saw another 5% growth in comparison to episode 3. With every episode adding to eyeballs to the prequel I was really excited for episode 5’s numbers as it will be the half-way mark of the series. Thankfully, today we have those and along with them we’ve also gotten the average viewers per episode for the prequel and spoiler warning- IT’S HUGE!
House of the Dragon is the Biggest Hit Since Game of Thrones!
House of the Dragon Episode 5 was the last episode for Milly Alcock’s Rhaenyra and Emily Carey’s Alicent. The episode was another great addition to the GOT prequel, trust me with each episode the series gets better and richer. Episode 5 marked the end of a chapter in the series and the numbers say that the audience loved this chapter. To be honest, this might’ve been the simplest chapter in the history of the Targaryens and the future episodes are simply going to make things more complicated.
According to a report from Variety, episode 5 drew in more viewers than episode 4, about 3% more. Considering that episode 4 already had about 17 million viewers, a 3% increase on it would bring episode 5’s numbers up to 18 Million. However, that’s not it. House of the Dragon is a bigger success than all of us think. The series so far averages 29 Million per viewers. That is a gigantic number, its predecessor- Game of Thrones used to average 44 Million viewers per episode in its 8th season.
Yes, that’s how big Game of Thrones was. The fanbase it had is unparalleled by anything and it shows as after the show ended, the only series that came close to its numbers was its prequel. House of the Dragon is not as big as Game of Thrones yet but it is definitely the biggest show right now. Nielsen’s measurement of Sunday’s four cable airings 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% increase when compared to last week’s 2.474 million cable viewers.
The GOT prequel has an incredible ensemble cast that includes Paddy Considine, Matt Smith, Olivia Cooke, Emma D’Arcy, Steve Toussaint, Eve Best, Fabien Frankel, Sonoya Mizuno, and Rhys Ifans. Along with the main cast, the supporting cast of the show includes- Milly Alcock, Bethany Antonia, Phoebe Campbell, Emily Carey, Harry Collett, Ryan Corr, Tom Glynn-Carney, Jefferson Hall, David Horovitch, Wil Johnson, John Macmillan, Graham McTavish, Ewan Mitchell, Theo Nate, Matthew Needham, Bill Paterson, Phia Saban, Gavin Spokes, Savannah Steyn, and more.
House of the Dragon’s first five episodes are currently streaming on HBO Max or Disney+. New episodes will debut on every Sunday or Monday on HBO and HBO Max or Disney+ Hotstar depending on the region you live in, at 9 pm or 6.30 am.
If you have any questions regarding House of the Dragon, feel free to ask in the comments below. For more content, stay tuned. As usual, like, subscribe and share our articles as we here are trying to build a community of people High on Cinema!
