HBO's "Game of Thrones" has once again ridden a high body count to a record viewer count.
The Nielsen company says Sunday's big-battle episode, the third of the final season, drew 17.8 million viewers either live on the network at 9 p.m., streamed, on-demand or in a rerun that aired later that night.
That made it the week's most-watched show cable or broadcast and the most-watched episode ever of an HBO show, topping the "Thrones" season eight premiere.
The episode featured a long-anticipated battle between the living and the dead that had a sky-high casualty count even for the famously bloody fantasy series.
The May 19 series finale is likely to break records.
