Game of Thrones has been a dragon-sized hit for years now, and it’s only gotten bigger in the final seasons. The last four episodes, from the season seven finale “The Dragon and the Wolf” to last Sunday’s “The Long Night,” are three of the four highest-rated episodes of the entire series. An estimated 12.017 million viewers watched the Battle of Winterfell in real-time, a figure no other cable show, not even The Walking Dead, comes close to matching. But while 12.017 million is impressive for Thrones, a near-identical 11.93 million viewers was considered a disappointment for another series that’s ending soon.
I’ll give you one hint: BAZINGA.
After 250-plus episodes, 12 seasons, and a dozen Emmys, The Big Bang Theory will vacate Apartment 4A on May 16. That’s only three days before the Game of Thrones finale! What an emotional week for anyone who watches both shows. I’m tempted to make a joke about this person being hypothetical, but in the spirit of Sheldon, let’s look at the numbers. (I assume Sheldon has a job that involves numbers?) The Live + Same Day Ratings for the five most recent TBBT episodes range from a low of 11.4 million to a high of 13.4 million. It’s a decent bet that a huge chunk of that fanbase also watches the show with the dragons, even if it seems like everyone on the internet is talking about Thrones, and you may not have known Big Bang Theory was ending until this paragraph.
But to dismiss The Big Bang Theory as something that only your parents watch, well, you might be right but there are a lot of parents out there: the CBS sitcom has consistently finished in the top-five of the most-watched primetime shows since season five. It was number one among total viewers for the 2017-2018 broadcast season; number two in 2016-2017 (behind Sunday Night Football); number two in 2015-2016 (once again behind Sunday Night Football, which is, if you’ll forgive the mixed metaphor, in a different ballpark than a scripted series); number two in 2014-2015 (guess what it was behind); and so on.
The Big Bang Theory is also more popular on social media than you might realize. The show has 4.63 million Twitter followers compared to 8.24 million for Game of Thrones, while TBBT‘s 31 million Facebook “fans” easily trumps Thrones‘ 23 million. But this post isn’t meant to compare the two shows (although there is a “Every Time Big Bang Theory Mentioned Game of Thrones” supercut, if that’s your thing) — it’s to simply marvel that the biggest show on broadcast and biggest show on cable are finished within days of each other.
(Side-note: what a brutal year for series finales. On top of Thrones and Big Bang Theory, we’re also losing/already lost Jane the Virgin, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, Veep, Mr. Robot, Broad City, Orange is the New Black, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Homeland, Gotham, iZombie, Transparent, The Deuce, and You’re the Worst. No, 2019 is the worst.)
That’s like if Avengers: Endgame came out one week and Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker was released the next (pretend they’re not owned by the same company), or if NBC lost Seinfeld and E.R. in the same month, or if Beyonce and Taylor Swift announced their retirements within days of each other, which can’t happen; Twitter’s servers wouldn’t be able to handle it. It’s the end of an era for CBS and HBO, both of which are celebrating/mourning the occasion.
CBS is getting more bang out of its Big Bang Theory goodbye buck, slotting a 30-minute retrospective to air the same night as the sitcom’s series finale. Titled Unraveling the Mystery: A Big Bang Farewell, the special — hosted by series stars Johnny Galecki and Kaley Cuoco — will air Thursday, May 16 at 9:30 p.m. following the one-hour Big Bang closer and the Young Sheldon season two finale.)
HBO will air a two-hour Game of Thrones documentary this May, capping the final, six-episode season of the mega-popular show and offering broken-hearted fans a final glimpse. Billed as a “bonus” for fans, Game of Thrones: The Last Watch will air May 26 and chronicle the making of the final season. British filmmaker Jeanie Finlay directs.)
HBO (and television as a whole) has never seen a show as world-engaging as Game of Thrones, and although it’s darn-near impossible to find the highest-rated cable episode of all-time, I imagine the “tits and dragons” epic will break that number like Daenerys does chains. Meanwhile, The Big Bang Theory won’t come close to topping the final episode of M*A*S*H, Cheers, or Seinfeld in terms of number of viewers, but the ratings will still be staggering, especially in an age where “staggering” and “ratings” are rarely used to describe broadcast shows. (For some perspective, an average episode of The Big Bang Theory was seen by 18.6 million people last season; that’s twice as many as American Idol, Will & Grace, and Empire.) Game of Thrones and The Big Bang Theory are two of the only monoliths left on TV, and they’ll both be gone within weeks.
But at least we still have Young Sheldon and the first of 24 Thrones prequels.
