The 'Game of Thrones' finale was the most watched HBO show of all time

Game of Thrones has ended!

At one point it felt like it would go on forever, but the creators decided to bring things to a close in a series of episodes that saw a lot of bloodshed and more than its fair share of tragedy. Luckily enough, absolutely every fan was satisfied with the final episode, there are no petitions moving for the last season to be remade, and zero Twitter wars over the way it all turned out.

Daenerys makes a speech to her Dothraki army:

In all seriousness, the show was incredibly divisive. Maybe the fanbase is leaning more towards the negative than the positive at this point, it's a little hard to tell. Regardless, it was definitely a success in terms of viewership. Fans stuck around for eight full seasons, and the millions of dollars HBO spent on each episode paid off after they learned of the monumental turnout to this week's episode.

The final episode of the final season not only became the most-watched episode of the show, but the most watched episode of any HBO show ever, with 13.6 million viewers on the live channel, according to the Wall Street Journal. When you add in numbers from streaming and on-demand watches, it goes up to around 19.3 million viewers - and those numbers are bound to soar even higher in the near future.

Sansa is crowned Queen of the North:

This isn't the first time the show has broken its own records with season finales. Season seven broke the record back in 2017 with 16.5 million total views, and a year before, the season six finale brought in around 8.9 million live views. That season seven finale is the third most-watched episode in the show's history, but the other five of the six most-watched episodes come from this latest season.

According to HBO, this season has averaged around 44.2 million viewers, something which will soon be bumped up by this series finale. After all, did you know any fan who wasn't watching the show as soon as they could? There is no way to avoid spoiler talk at the office, at school, or on the internet at this point.

It's not surprising that a season finale would bring in this many people - I'm sure even those who decided to stop watching the show at some point or had no plans to ever start may have dropped in out of curiosity, especially when the whole world was talking about it.

Bran is named the King of the Six Kingdoms:

If you're not feeling too hot on the Game of Thrones finale, and especially if you're feeling like you've wasted years of your life investing in a show that didn't end the way you'd hoped - there may be a silver lining. One website is apparently offering counselling to any Thrones fan distraught by what happened at the end of the show.