The Walking Dead finally aired its season 10 finale over this past weekend, which was good news for fans, but it seems general audiences hardly noticed it. The episode, 10×16 “A Certain Doom,” has officially earned the lowest ever ratings in TWD history.
As per SpoilerTV, the finale was viewed by 2.73 million viewers and scored a 0.87 demo rating. About the same time last year, the season 10 premiere earned 4 million viewers and a 1.4 demo rating. The penultimate episode, meanwhile, “The Tower,” which aired back in April, was watched by 3.49 million with a 1.13 demo.
Fans will know that The Walking Dead‘s ratings have been continuing to descend over the past few years, ever since the gory season 7 premiere. As you can see from the above figures, though, season 10 was relatively steady, so the finale failing to recoup many of those viewers back after the half-year break is a big blow.
In particular, this is only the second time the show has dipped below 1 in the demo, with figures now dropping lower than its very first season. AMC tried their best to drum up anticipation and hype for the finale, airing various marathons and reruns of classic episodes in the month preceding its arrival, and they also pitched it as a “special event” rather than a random leftover outing, but it seems all their efforts still didn’t do the trick.
We’ll have to see if the show is able to bounce back when it returns in 2021. The news that The Walking Dead was ending in 2022 gained it a lot of renewed attention, so it’s possible that some folks who’ve drifted away from the series in recent years could return to see how it all ends. The unusual structure of the episodes still to come may disrupt a sustained ratings increase, though, as we have six installments arriving early next year before the 24-part season 11 kicks off later in 2021.