It was grim and ugly and miserable. The clothes and hair were unkempt. The cheesesteaks looked sad. And yet Mare of Easttown — HBO’s contribution to the regional murder series wave, as parodied on SNL — raked ‘em in. The network has put out numbers for the seventh and final episode, which aired over the Memorial Day weekend, and it allegedly was a record-breaker.
Audience for the series grew each and every week, allowing #MareOfEasttown to join THE UNDOING as the only series in HBO’s history to accomplish consecutive growth with each episode. HBO credits digital viewership as a major growth area.
— Brandon Katz (@Great_Katzby) June 1, 2021
According to HBO themselves, the Mare closer raked in four million viewers over the holiday weekend across both the HBO cable channel and its streamer HBO Max. Three million of those watched it on Sunday, when it dropped. That’s more than those who watched such similarly popular original HBO shows as The Undoing and The Flight Attendant during the same window of time. What’s more, it’s the most-watched single episode of an original show on HBO Max since it launched last summer.
But that’s not all! Mare managed to increase its viewership week-to-week. The only other HBO show to do that is The Undoing, which ran last fall.
Just to stress this: These numbers come from HBO itself. Much like Netflix, they release their own data, and there’s no independent source to back this intel up. But considering how popular the show has been over social media, it doesn’t seem too far-fetched.
Over a mere seven episodes, Mare followed Kate Winslet as a Philly burb detective tracking an increasingly convoluted murder case, which had so many twists that Uproxx was actually able to rank them. There are already calls for a second season, which would give its Oscar-winning English star another chance to feast upon southeast Pennsylvanian delicacies. For instance, we don’t remember seeing her chow down on a Tastykake Tasty Klair Pie…
