House of the Dragon is exactly the kind of megahit HBO was hoping it would be riding high off Game of Thrones nostalgia back when the series was still good. And the numbers are reflecting that.

According to Variety viewership for House of the Dragon keeps increasingly slowly but surely and now the show is averaging 29 million viewers an episode across these first five episodes. What does that mean in context?

Those are monster figures for any premium cable show and stacked against its predecessor series that 29 million is more than triple the 9.3 million viewers HBO said that season 1 of Game of Thrones averaged when it aired. Of course that was a decade ago with fewer places to watch and the series just spooling up. But even taking that into consideration 29 million is not all that far away from the 46 million that Game of Thrones averaged in season 8 its final season.

Here is how Game of Thrones progressed over time with its average viewership

• Season 1 – 9.3 million

• Season 2 – 11.6 million

• Season 3 – 14.4 million

• Season 4 – 19.1 million

• Season 5 – 20.2 million

• Season 6 – 25.7 million

• Season 7 - 32.8 million

• Season 8 – 46 million

So House of the Dragon has gotten a free pass to skip ahead all the way to almost season 7 numbers of Game of Thrones obviously boosted by being in the same universe and a deep hunger for fans who want more and namely want the world to be interesting and good again unlike those last few non-book-adapted seasons of the main show.