Outlander season 3 episode 12 ratings preview: Why ‘The Bakra’ should rise

Is anyone out there predicting big things when it comes to the Outlander season 3 episode 12 ratings? We know that we’ve got high hopes.

“The Bakra,” (which is airing in just over 24 hours on Starz) has the potential of being one of the most-popular episodes of this season, and that starts with just the timing of it all. This is the penultimate episode of the season and when you tend to look at premium cable shows, the final two episodes tend to draw better ratings than almost the majority of the rest of the season. Viewers realize that at the end of a season there are often big surprises, and with that there are things that fans don’t want to miss.

There is an interesting ratings comparison you can make between Outlander season 2 and where we are right now in season 3. Remember when CarterMatt wrote about a recent ratings slump for the show? It’s starting to come out of it based on the ratings for 3×11, and if we are to use the season 2 ratings as a guide it will continue to guide moving up into the penultimate episode. (Outlander 2×12, at the time it aired, drew the best ratings the show had in weeks.) Following “The Bakra,” Outlander should rise yet again for the finale. Shows do tend to hit a lull at the midway point before that sense of urgency / need to watch live comes back.

Let’s get now into the hard numbers. Outlander 3×11 last week drew 1.402 million viewers. Meanwhile, the week before that was when the series drew its season low of 1.23. With this trajectory in mind, our prediction is that the Outlander season 3 episode 12 ratings are going to finish at around 1.5 million, putting this at around the viewership average for the entire season. As much as we’d like to see it surge even more that feels unrealistic given that the show was recently in such a valley. Outlander ratings tend to be slow builds rather than enormous swings one week to the next.

For the finale our hope is to get over 1.7 million viewers for the show and get close to the record numbers set by “A. Malcolm” earlier this season — we should have a better idea as to whether or not Outlander will top that when the ratings for “The Bakra” are released. It needs that momentum, and we’re excited to report on these numbers on either Tuesday or Wednesday. (Given that this is not a holiday weekend, the Nielsens should resume to reporting Sunday cable ratings on Tuesdays.)

Caveat – Remember that all of the numbers listed here are live+same-day figures generated mostly by Starz viewership. There are many more viewers actually watching than what is accounted for here.

What do you want the Outlander season 3 episode 12 ratings to be? Share some of your thoughts and hopes right now in the attached comments!

To preview what is coming on Outlander in terms of the story, check out the piece here. You can also like CarterMatt on Facebook to generate more news on every show we cover! (Photo: Starz.)