The season finale to AMC’s The Walking Dead was one for the ages. And fans of the apocalyptic offering tuned in to see what their favorite characters were getting themselves into. Nielsen says the show, which normally averages about 14 million viewers, enjoyed a 17 percent week-to-week increase. The finale was also 26 percent greater than that of a year ago. According to Variety, among all episodes to date, Sunday’s finale ranks third, behind only the season 4 premiere last fall (16.11 million) and the show’s mid-season return on Feb. 9 (15.76 million).
In adults 18-49, The Walking Dead averaged an 8.0 rating (10.2 million viewers in the age group), up 20% week-to-week and about 25% vs. last year. It more than tripled the top rating for any broadcast entertainment series on Sunday (ABC’s Resurrection did a 2.3 rating). The Walking Dead ruled over Twitter as well and was the No. 1 non-sports program of the night as far as Twitter was concerned. It garnered 1.01 million show-related tweets from 356,770 unique authors, generating a total of 63.11 million Twitter TV impressions, according to Nielsen.
