Game of Thrones is officially over and to get proper closure – like the devoted fans that we are – we leveraged our Overnight Poll to explore what Americans think of the show in general and, more specifically, the final season & final episode. To understand the sentiment around the finale, we fielded two surveys. We conducted one survey immediately before and the other immediately after the last episode. Here is what we found:

• Before the finale aired, 68% of our respondents said they did not intend to watch the episode, but after it aired only 62% declared neither having watched it nor intending to watch it soon.
• 66% of people who have watched the finale are satisfied with how the show ended
• Before the finale, 49% of respondents described themselves as “very satisfied” with Season 8, whereas after the finale, only 37% say they were very satisfied.
• Of those who were dissatisfied, the primary complaints were that “The plot lines in the last two seasons (7 and 8) felt rushed,” (65%) and that, “There were too many story lines left unfinished.” (55%)
• More than half (54%) of Americans believe there will be a Game of Thrones movie.
• Most Game of Thrones viewers plan to re-watch the series, with 70% of respondents saying that they will.
• When asked, “After watching the last episode of Game of Thrones, did you engage with online discussion about the episode on social media?” 32% said that they participated in discussion on social media and 29% said they read discussion on social media but didn’t participate.
• 67% of viewers watched the episode in their home, and 24% watched in the homes of their family and friends
• 84% say they will keep their HBO subscription even after the series has ended, but 16% said that they would cancel.

About the poll

The survey that was fielded before the series finale was conducted online within the United States from May 18-19, 2019 among 1,092 US adults by HarrisX. The sampling margin of error of this poll is plus or minus 3.0 percentage points.

The survey that was fielded after the series finale was conducted online within the United States from May 20-21, 2019 among 1,108 US adults by HarrisX.  The sampling margin of error of this poll is plus or minus 2.9 percentage points. The results reflect a nationally representative sample of adults in the US. Results were weighted for age within gender, census region, race/ethnicity, and income where necessary to align them with their actual proportions in the population.

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