Cutting deep into cable viewership on Sunday night, the wound on Cynthia Erivo’s character’s arm in the mid-credits scene of the finale of The Outsider was just the latest but surely not last twist in the tale of the HBO miniseries based on Stephen King’s 2018 novel.
Coming in with a season high of 1.37 million viewers for its 9 PM first run airing on March 8, the Richard Price penned 10th episode of the Ben Mendelsohn, Marc Menchaca and Jason Bateman co-starrer capped a run that saw the horror crime drama top another record, of sorts. With the first nine episodes of the Media Rights Capital produced Outsider averaging 9 million viewers on combined platforms, the mini is aiming to be have the best overall run of an HBO drama since the soon-to-be returning Westworld debuted back in the ancient era of 2015.
In fact, with the finale up 16% in first run numbers from the previous high of March 1’s penultimate episode, the 2.2 million that the end of Season 1 of The Outsider had from its two telecasts plus HBO Now and HBO GO is also a high for the series.
Getting as close to premium cable apples to apples as one can, the first season of The Outsider just outpaced the Emmy winning third season of True Detective. An New Year’s baby of sorts like the January 12 debuting The Outsider, that Mahershala Ali and Stephen Dorff-led run premiered on January 13 last year and saw overall per episode viewership of 8 million for its eight-episode run.
No word on whether there will be more Outsider, but if you saw the finale on Sunday, you know there were some pretty strong seeds strewn about the cave …