A pretty sharp viewership decline was registered in The Last of Us Season 2 finale on HBO. The widely acclaimed debut season had over 8.2 million viewers in the United States despite airing at the same time as the Oscars ceremony. However, the season that just ended only registered 3.7 million viewers (via The Wrap), a 55% drop. HBO cautioned that the numbers might increase and reminded everyone that the series has been watched globally by over 90 million viewers, with the second season averaging almost 37 million global viewers per episode.

It’s all too easy to imagine the drop could have been caused by a certain character’s death that gamers know all too well from The Last of Us Part II. However, HBO has already renewed the show for a third season, which will place a larger focus on Abby. In a press conference dedicated to The Last of Us Season 2 finale, series co-creator Craig Mazin said:

There is another side to this story that we have yet to really delve into. And there’s no question that Abby is the hero of her story. Where we go next, all I can say is it will always be centering on somebody, whether it’s Ellie and Dina or whether it’s Abby. But really, if you want to boil it down, everything is under the cloud or sunlight of Joel — what Joel did to Abby and what Joel did for Ellie — and that will never change.

In other franchise news, The Last of Us Part II Remastered on PC was just updated with support for NVIDIA DLSS 4 Multi Frame Generation. Last week, series creator Neil Druckmann said that the much-requested third installment could be made, but only if he and Naughty Dog as a whole can find a worthy story to tackle.