‘Succession’ hits series' highest ratings for shocking episode

The noise is deafening on social media. Something drastic happened in the latest episode of HBO’s family drama Succession.

Correspondingly, The HBO series delivered its biggest first-night audience ever for an episode that featured the shocking, if perhaps inevitable, death of a chief character. The episode brought in 2.5 million viewers across all platforms, beating the former night-one high of 2.3 million for the season four premiere on March 26.

Sunday’s episode also saw had a 22 percent spike in weekly viewers, growing from 2 million viewers for the season’s second installment (all figures are taken from Nielsen and internal HBO data).

The season’s first two episodes have brought in on average 540,000 viewers for their initial airings on HBO’s cable channel, accounting for about 25 percent of the first-night total. The remaining comes from streaming on HBO Max and on-air replays.

American satirical black comedy-drama Succession follows the Roy family, owners of Waystar RoyCo, a global media and entertainment conglomerate, who are fighting for control of the company amid ambiguity surrounding the health of the family's head, Logan Roy (Brian Cox).