The new HBO series, ‘The Last Of Us’, attracted 4.7 million viewers during its premiere on Sunday night, making the zombie thriller the second largest debut for the network since 2010, only behind ‘House Of The Dragon’ last year.
The premiere of ‘House Of The Dragon’ remains the largest in HBO’s history, with the first episode debuting in August 2022 and drawing nearly 10 million viewers.
The first episode of ‘The Last Of Us’ was also a success among critics. The series has so far achieved a 99% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, the most popular movie and series reviewer in the United States.
Synopsis
‘The Last Of Us’ stars actors who appeared in ‘Game of Thrones’, Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey, and is an adaptation of the acclaimed 2013 game of the same name. The series follows Pascal’s character escorting a teenager played by Ramsey in a post-apocalyptic United States after the world has been swept by a fungal pandemic that killed most of the Earth’s population and turned others into zombies.
Surprising Fact
The brain infection caused by ‘cordyceps’ shown in the series, which transforms humans into zombies after invading their brains, was inspired by real-life fungi that can indeed ‘hijack’ their hosts, experts say. The ‘zombie fungus’ typically affects insects by manipulating their behavior with chemical signals. In real life, cordyceps are not equipped to invade, establish, and transmit spores in a human body.
Good thing!