HBO says Euphoria is now its second biggest show after Game Of Thrones

Who needs the Khaleesi and her dragons when you've got Zendaya?

By Sam Barsanti  |  March 1, 2022 | 2:55am
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HBO says Euphoria is now its second biggest show after Game Of Thrones
Euphoria Photo: Eddy Chen/HBO

The concept of an HBO show has changed over the years, from genre-defining “prestige dramas” like The Sopranos, to edgy/weird comedies like Curb Your Enthusiasm, to extremely expensive movie-level spectacles like Game Of Thrones, but even as the attention garnered by the spectacles seemed to overwhelm everything else, a little show called Euphoria has been trucking along, dominating the cultural conversation with its trippy, high-stakes stories about teens and drugs and sex and Zendaya.

And now, as of last night’s season finale, Euphoria is now the second-most watched show “since 2004” on HBO, with the first being Game Of Thrones. That stat comes from HBO itself (via Variety), so there’s no explanation for that “since 2004” thing (maybe some mid-run Deadwood or Sopranos season was technically bigger but HBO doesn’t want to waste some good PR for Euphoria?), but the point is that Euphoria is huge.

So huge that Variety says the per-episode ratings are up “nearly 100 percent” from the first season, and it hit “a new series high” with the episode that aired opposite the Super Bowl earlier this month. Who would’ve thought that there’s not much crossover between the audiences for Euphoria and the Super Bowl?

It’s worth underlining that this is all coming from HBO, so it is just meaningless HBO propaganda (like when Netflix brags about how popular its original content is), but its decision to trumpet this fact does at least indicate that HBO is very happy with Euphoria. Also, speaking of meaningless things, the show is the “most-tweeted TV show of the decade (so far),” according to a separate Variety report.

If that were a thing that mattered, though, we’d all be hearing about… 9-1-1: Lone Star a lot more than we currently do. (As of this writing, it’s one of the shows that’s currently trending on Twitter and the one that lends itself best to this kind of joke. WWE Raw and The Bachelor aren’t as funny, you see.)

If you’re eager to see what this Euphoria hype is about, the second season just finished and it’s already been renewed for a third.

 
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