The Walking Dead season 8 ratings barely rise for midseason finale
After all, the latest episode in the midseason finale “How It’s Gonna be” ended up drawing in total a 3.4 rating in the 18-49 demographic to go along with almost 8 million viewers. While this is an improvement in the demo versus where the AMC show was back for the prior episode, this is the lowest-rated midseason finale since all the way back in 2011.
In trying to figure out a reason for the decline, we don’t really think it’s all that complicated. While you can claim that more viewers are either recording the show or waiting to watch it on Netflix down the road (both are probably true), the #1 factor hurting the zombie drama is simply declining interest. It’s hard to keep a super-serialized show going for too long, especially one that feels like it’s doing roughly the same thing year in and year out. We’ve said it before and we still think it bears repeating a few more times: This is a show that would benefit heavily from setting an end date. It’s important for many fans to have closure and they are more likely to see a journey through when they know that it is coming.
It’s a little bit unfair to connect some of these ratings at all with what happened at the end of this episode with Carl — most of the viewers watching were not privy to some of the rumors in advance surrounding Chandler Riggs’ future on the show. What’s going to be a little bit more interesting to us is seeing if there is a rise in the numbers for when The Walking Dead returns with new episodes in the new year. The advance knowledge that Carl is going to die could be a spark to move ratings in the right direction, but whether or not that is enough remains to be seen. (Personally, we think that there is going to be a rise in numbers that comes with Carl’s imminent exit — we’re just not sure it will be permanent.)
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