Euphoria Trails Game of Thrones as HBO's Most-Watched TV Show

By Nicole Drum

HBO's Euphoria may be the show of the moment, but it's cemented its place as one of the network's most watched series. The Zendaya-starring drama hit a new series high with Sunday night's Season 2 finale making the series the second-watched show behind only Game of Thrones. According to Variety, Euphoria Season 2 episodes average 16.3 million viewers, the best performance of any season of an HBO series in the past 18 years, with the noted exception of Game of Thrones. Sunday's season finale drew 6.6 million viewers. The series is so popular that when HBO Max crashed on Sunday night ahead of the season finale, users took to social media in a frenzy about potentially not being able to tune in. Fortunately, the service interruption ended up being brief.

Starring Zendaya, Hunter Schafer, Nika King, Eric Dane, Angus Cloud, Jacob Elordi, Algee Smith, Sydney Sweeney, Alexa Demi, Barbie Ferreira, Maude Apatow, Javon Walton, Dominic Fike, Storm Reid, and Austin Abrams, Season 2 of Euphoria focuses on the interconnected lives of high school students in East Highland where Rue (Zendaya) must find hope while also balancing the pressures of love, loss, and addiction. Season 2's finale ended on a shocking note with many of the season's major conflicts coming to a stunning and violent head. The series, which was created by and is written, directed, and executive produced by Sam Levinson, has already been renewed for a third season.

"Sam is like family to me. I talk to him almost every day and night, every other day," Zendaya previously said about working with Levinson, who she also worked with for the film Malcom & Marie. "Sometimes we talk about Euphoria, and sometimes we just talk about life or current events or whatever. So, we got this idea that we could do a movie in quarantine safely with a very small number of people. We used some crew members from Euphoria who obviously didn't have a job because filming had stopped. I was fascinated with this idea of shooting a film with just two characters. It was like a play. It was challenging for all of us because it was shot in just one space. Being quarantined together was great in some ways, because it allowed us to workshop and really dig into the material while we were there."

Seasons 1 and 2 of Euphoria are now streaming on HBO Max. As was previously mentioned, the series has been renewed for a third season.

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