Fiona Gallagher left her family Sunday night and Emmy Rossum left “Shameless,” giving the Showtime drama its most-watched episode of the ninth season as her parting gift.
At 9 p.m., “Shameless’s” Season 9 finale hit a season high with 1.34 million total linear viewers, which is a 19 percent increase from the previous week’s episode and up 3 percent from the current season’s premiere, according to Live + Same Day data from Nielsen.
It was also the eight-highest-rated program across cable for the evening in the advertiser-coveted adults 18-49 demographic, with 585,000 total viewers in that metric.
Including replays, on-demand viewing and streaming, the finale rose to a total of 2.24 million viewers, which is up 10 percent from last week’s overall-eyeballs tally when adding in those platforms, and slightly above the Season 9 premiere, which scored 2.23 million total viewers with those numbers counted.
Rossum announced she was leaving “Shameless” last August, giving fans plenty of time to get used to the Fiona-less cast before the ninth season premiered the next month.
“I know you will continue on without me, for now,” the star wrote in a long open letter on Facebook at the time. “There is much more Gallagher story to be told. I will always be rooting for my family. Try not to think of me as gone, just think of me as moving down the block.”
“Shameless” was renewed for Season 10 by Showtime in January, with all of the Gallagher family set to return for the next installment — with the exception of Rossum, of course.
Macy, Kenney, Jeremy Allen White, Ethan Cutkosky, Christian Isaiah and even Cameron Monaghan are coming back for the next season of what will now be Showtime’s longest-running series ever. Production on Season 10 will begin this year.