‘Outlander’ season 2 premiere ratings strongest on Starz to date; will season 3 renewal come soon?

We’ve known for some time that “Outlander” would probably get some great numbers for its season 2 premiere. How could it not when you consider everything that it had working in its favor? We’re talking here about tons of internet hype, an extensive promotional tour, and many months for newcomers to catch up on the first season. Heck, Starz even made the entire first 16 episodes free to watch for a time in order for people to get invested.

Now, we come bearing the fruits of all this labor. According to TVbythenumbers, the show drew a series-best 1.46 million viewers for its season 2 premiere, and to go along with that a 0.4 rating in the key 18-49 demographic. Those are great numbers for a premium cable network like Starz, and they still are not even representative of the total viewing audience.

Remember here that these ratings calculate more or less the live+same day viewership for the premiere episode on the network itself, and they don’t include the early streams (Starz made the premiere available early via its app) or people who choose to check it out via the DVR or On-Demand a little late. (The show airs on Saturday nights, so there is a strong DVR audience for this show.) It may take a little bit of time before we get the full scope of how the episode fared.

One of our theories for some time is that Starz probably knows they are renewing the drama for a third season, but wants to make some sort of blanket announcement when they announce the likely-record numbers for the show with all measures calculated in. We still stand by this as likely happening; note that this is just our speculation, but we cannot imagine a universe where this show ends anytime soon.

If you missed our review of the “Outlander” premiere, you can check that out over at the link here. Meanwhile, sign up over here to get some more TV news on all we cover, sent right to you via our CarterMatt Newsletter. (Photo: Starz.)