Thrones rules airwaves, again

After a nearly two-year wait, Game of Thrones roared back on Sunday night and shattered its own ratings record with its Season 8 premiere.

The opening episode of the final season was watched by a record 17.4 million viewers, including viewership through its digital channels, HBO said. It surpassed the 16.9 million viewers who watched the show's Season 7 finale — a previous record for a single episode of the series in August 2017.

After Sunday night's premiere, all of social media top trending topics in the US were Thrones-related. According to Headline Planet, the series and its characters sat atop the trending topics on Twitter, following the premiere Sunday night. It was also the most-tweeted-about episode of Game of Thrones ever. There were more than 5 million tweets, and over the weekend 11 million mentions.

"I was very excited last night because I've been waiting for too long. And I really enjoyed it," Matthew Rayburn, a longtime fan, told China Daily. "Overall it was a satisfactory season premier. I wish the first episode was a little longer, as I do feel that certain scenes were rushed."

"It's a solid episode. But I guess my expectations after almost two years of waiting got too high to be satisfied by this one," Yujie Yang, who lives in New York, told China Daily.

"Not as intense as I thought it'd be as the beginning of the season finale, but maybe not a bad thing to put pieces together before the real tension comes along later," she said.

"Game of Thrones is back at last, and the premiere doesn't disappoint. In fact, it's a stunning reminder of what makes Game of Thrones special," wrote Zoe Delahunty-Light, a critic on film- and television-rating website Rotten Tomatoes.

The new episode "Winterfell" received a score of 92 percent on Rotten Tomatoes' Tomatometer, which measures the percentage of Approved Tomatometer Critics who have given it a positive review. It also received an average rating of 7.78 out of 10.

The show also caused a global sensation. Anticipation for the new season in China is nothing less than soaring, with a discussion topic on Weibo racking up 96 million views on Sunday afternoon.

The Season 8 premiere was streamed online in China on Monday morning by Tencent Video, a unit of Chinese tech giant Tencent, which gained exclusive distribution rights to the show from HBO in 2014.

"After a two-year wait in the 'cold winter', finally it comes!" wrote Weibo user Mishi Meng Meng. "I just finished watching it and I want to give it a 12 out of 10 — it's really worth the wait!"

Last season, HBO said an average of 32.8 million viewers per episode watched Thrones after months of streaming viewership was added. With 47 Emmy Awards, the show has won more Emmys than any television drama in history.

Based on the novel series by George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones was created by David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, telling the story about several families from different kingdoms scheming to sit on the Iron Throne. Its cast includes Kit Harington, Sophie Turner, Lena Headey, Peter Dinklage and Emilia Clarke.

The final season of the rpic comes at crossoroads for HBO. Last year, the network's parent company Time Warner was acquired by AT&T in a deal worth $85 billion. Time Warner was renamed WarnerMedia and, within the year, all top executives at the company have stepped down and been replaced.

There are only five episodes left in the series, with four of the last five episodes having run times of around 80 minutes. What will HBO do as a follow up when Thrones runs out on May 19?

"I think they need a prestige show on this level to remain HBO," Bill Carter, a media analyst, told The Associated Press. But "more than ever, it's really hard to find a hit show and to break through in this marketplace."

"I'm not going to argue that we won't miss Game of Thrones. It's been a fantastic show for us, but life does go on," HBO programming chief Casey Bloys told the AP.

One possibility is an untitled prequel to Game of Thrones created by Martin and Jane Goldman and starring Naomi Watts that is scheduled for filming in June. Bloys said it is among several potential "Thrones" with discussions at HBO about "how many is too many?".

"We have high hopes for the pilot,'' he said. "But I want to be clear ... we're not trying to do the same show again."