A premature leak couldn’t stop HBO’s House of the Dragon from performing. Sunday’s season finale scored HBO a win in ratings becoming the network’s most-watched finale since its predecessor’s series finale in 2019. According to Deadline, over 9M people viewed “The Black Queen” across all platforms. Game of Thrones season eight finale in May of 2019 was viewed by 19.3M at the time in comparison.

“We’re so thrilled to see House of the Dragon catch fire with Game of Thrones fans around the world, as well as new viewers who are discovering the world of Westeros for the first time,” HBO and HBO Max chairman and CEO, Casey Bloys, said via Deadline. “Congrats to George, Ryan, Miguel and the whole House of the Dragon team on an incredible first season.”

After nine episodes spanning almost 20 years and multiple actor replacements, the series found Princess Rhaenyra, played by Emma D’Arcy (Wanderlust, Mothering Sunday) at a crossroads as her place on the Iron Throne was usurped by her younger brother, Aegon Targaryen. While her small council anticipates a call to war against The Greens in King’s Landing, Rhaenyra is more cautious in making strong allegiances before a sword is drawn. But this act of good faith is in vain as a horrific incident ignites the civil war known as the Dance of the Dragons ablaze.

Deadline reports the series was averaging around 29M viewers per episode, seeing their average increase each week with streaming viewership after Sunday evenings. By the sixth season of Game of Thrones, the show was averaging 36M viewers in the U.S. Globally, the series has since surpassed Game of Thrones becoming a huge hit on streaming in Latin America, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Southeast Asia, and Europe.

With an early season renewal, season two of the sequel series will probably arrive some time in 2024. A Song of Fire and Ice author George R.R. Martin (The Winds of Winter) recently commented the series would have to last at least four seasons to tell the story accurately.

“It is going to take four full seasons of 10 episodes each to do justice to the Dance of the Dragons, from start to finish,” he wrote on his blog earlier this month, via Today.

All ten episodes of House of the Dragon are available to stream on HBO Max.