“Mother’s Mercy” was the highest rated Game of Thrones episode of all time
As it ever was and likely ever shall be, Game of Thrones pulled in strong numbers this past Sunday. Like, really strong. Like, highest-rated episode of all time strong. “Mother’s Mercy,” the show’s Season 5 finale, was watched live by a record 8.11 million people, earning it a rating of 4.1 among adults 18-49. The show’s previous ratings record was set by “The Wars to Come,” the Season 5 premiere, which was watched live by around 8 million people.
It’s worth noting that “Mother’s Mercy” also broke the series’ record when it comes to piracy, so people were just lining up around the block to get really, really depressed by the episode’s perfect storm of tragic events. The show’s closest competitor on the cable front this past Sunday was HBO’s own Silicon Valley, which pulled in just under a fourth of Game of Thrones’ numbers.
It’s a happy ending to a somewhat erratic season, ratings-wise. The show never performed poorly—this is Game of Thrones we’re talking about—but the ratings dipped significantly after “The Wars to Come” and continued to slide slowly downward through much of the middle of the season—Season 5 is the first season of the show where every episode didn’t receive better live ratings than the corresponding episode of the season before it. Things picked up around “Hardhome” and just kept getting better until this past Sunday, when the show bowed out amid a rain of glory. Whatever its mid-season woes, it’s extremely likely that, once the numbers are all tallied, this will have been the most-watched season of the show overall.
If it weren’t already a foregone conclusion, these numbers would seem to ensure Game of Thrones’ continued existence on HBO. If anything, they’ll probably inspire the network to outright beg executive producers David Benioff and Dan Weiss to extend the series beyond its projected seven seasons, something Benioff and Weiss have toyed with doing anyway. In any case, congratulations to the show on a successful year.
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