HBO’s Game of Thrones is more popular than ever, as it should be.

The numbers are in for the season four premiere of the show last night, and they’re big. The initial 9 p.m. broadcast scored 6.6 million viewers, up 2.2 million from the show’s season three premiere of 4.4 million.

Not only was this the most watched episode of Thrones so far, but it was also the second-most-watched episode of any HBO show, coming in right behind the 2007 series finale of The Sopranos, which landed 11.9 million viewers.

Additionally, later re-airings of the show boosted its number to 8.2 million viewers, and it even crashed HBO Go.

The Game of Thrones return also had an impressive ripple effect on one of the shows making its debut. Mike Judge’s new comedy Silicon Valley grabbed 2 million viewers in its initial broadcast, the highest for a comedy debut since Hung‘s 2.8 million in 2009, and a total of 2.5 million after replays. To compare, the premiere of Veep drew 1.4 million, and Girls only had 872,000 for its first episode.

[Source: Deadline]

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