Danai Gurira’s farewell episode of “The Walking Dead” put up the show’s largest audience since its Season 10 premiere last October.
Airing at 9 p.m., the AMC drama’s goodbye installment for fan-favorite character Michonne (Gurira), drew 3.7 million total viewers, with 1.6 million coming from the advertiser-coveted 18-49 demographic, according to Nielsen’s Live + Same Day ratings. In terms of overall eyeballs, that’s the biggest tune-in “The Walking Dead” has seen since its 10th season debuted to 4 million total viewers on Oct. 6.
Counting three days’ worth of (mostly DVR) playback, Episode 1013, titled “What We Become,” rose to 5.3 million total viewers and 2.4 million in the key demo. That’s up 4% from the week-ago episode and more than 25% over Episode 1011 in total viewers. Among adults 18-49, the show rose +3% and +34%, respectively, from last week’s episode and the one that aired two weeks ago.
Following Gurira’s exit episode on Sunday, the first-ever “Home Edition” of “Talking Dead,” in which host Chris Hardwick and special guests Gurira, Scott M. Gimple and Yvette Nicole Brown video conferenced into the show from home, delivered “TWD” after show its highest ratings since early October.
Putting up 1.8 million total viewers in Nielsen’s Live + 3 Day numbers, the “Talking Dead” episode was beat only by the one that came right after the Season 10 premiere last fall and was up 10% from the previous week’s episode.
“Talking Dead” will again air as a “Home Edition” this Sunday, as you can see from TheWrap’s first-look image of the episode below.
“The Walking Dead” Season 10 has just two more episodes to air — for now. The season will come to an early end on Sunday, April 5, with Episode 1015, as post-production was unable to be completed on the finale episode amid industry-wide shutdown due to the coronavirus pandemic.
“Current events have unfortunately made it impossible to complete post-production of The Walking Dead Season 10 finale, so the current season will end with its 15th episode on April 5,” AMC said in a statement Tuesday. “The planned finale will appear as a special episode later in the year.”
Read TheWrap’s interview with Gurira about her final episode here.
“The Walking Dead” airs Sundays at 9/8c on AMC.