Outlander season 3 finale ratings preview: Will ‘Eye of the Storm’ set a record?

What should the Outlander season 3 finale ratings be? Going into this weekend’s big send-off, we’re back with our final ratings preview of the season. It’s tremendously sad that we’ve made it to the end of the line this season, but rejoice that there is more great stuff coming next year!

Let’s start by looking back at the ratings so far in season 3: In terms of live+same-day numbers alone, the show is averaging 1.51 million viewers an episode. That’s an increase of almost 40% from season 2! Some of that is probably due to the show moving from Saturdays to Sundays, and some of that is also probably due to the show getting more attention and press this year than ever before. It’s a great series, and with that it’s fair to assume that more viewers are discovering it. (As a possibly-controversial opinion: Personally, CarterMatt preferred the show airing on Saturdays.)

As of right now, the series’ live record viewership is 1.72 million for the episode “A. Malcolm” earlier this year — given that this was the Print Shop reunion episode, we doubt that anyone is altogether surprised by this. That’s the benchmark that the finale entitled “Eye of the Storm” has to match in order to get the title of most-watched episode to date. We’re honestly not sure if Outlander will do that. While the ratings have improved week to week for the past couple of episodes, it would have to improve by more than 200,000 viewers to set a new record with the finale. That’s not an increase that it has pulled off from one episode to the next all season. It’s possible, but for now we’d put our personal ratings expectation more around 1.64 million. This would potentially put it past “First Wife” as the #2 episode of the show to date ratings-wise.

One thing we do feel fairly confident about is that “Eye of the Storm” will be the most-watched finale for the series so far. Technically, the most-watched “finale” is the last episode of season 1A, which generated close to 1.42 million viewers. While we’ve seen Outlander perform worse than that for a few episodes this season, it’s hard to think that it will for a big, much-anticipated finale. The only significant ratings competition out there is NFL football and that’s been there most of the season. We think it has an impact but not an enormous one — viewers can easily catch Outlander live and not miss all that much of the game, or at least the parts that matter.

We should know the Outlander season 3 finale ratings officially on Tuesday — we could even know more than the live+same-day estimates depending on if Starz orders a special press release. Stay tuned…

What do you expect the Outlander season 3 finale ratings to be?

Share some of your personal expectations now in the comments!

Also, be sure to click here for some more Outlander news, including how to vote for the show in the CarterMatt Awards this year! You can also like CarterMatt on Facebook for even more news on this show and some others we cover. (Photo: Starz.)