The long-awaited season two premiere of Westworld took place on Sunday and while it may not have picked up many new fans, its performance was pretty steady with where it started in season one.
The series opened its second season with 2.1 million viewers at 9 PM Sunday night. That was up 5% from the series’ linear debut in fall 2016. With the same-night replay and streaming on HBO GO/NOW factored in, the Season two opener’s viewership grew to 3 million viewers. That was slightly below the 3.3 average for the series premiere, which included two premiere night replays vs. one for the Season 2 opener.
The retention is particularly good because there was a year and a half break between seasons and in this fickle television world we live in now, that could mean people would simply forget about the show but it would appear that the awareness was still there. HBO also repeated the entire first season in the hours before the season two premiere.
Delayed viewing plays a major role in the bigger picture for Westworld, whose first season garnered nearly 80% of its audience post-premiere night, lifting its average to a record 13.2 million viewers — the biggest debut season of any series in HBO’s history. On digital platforms, the sophomore drama draws the second-biggest premiere night viewing behind mega-hit Game of Thrones. Compared with the Season 1 average, the Season 2 debut of Westworld was up 13%. for the cable network.
