The audience for the Season 4 premiere of Yellowstone doubled the audience for Season 3. Sunday night's (Nov. 7) two-episode debut was also the most-watched cable telecast in over three years.

Deadline shares that eight million people watched Yellowstone on the Paramount Network. By comparison, the Season 3 premiere drew a still respectable 4.2 million viewers. The last time a cable series brought a larger audience was in 2018 with The Walking Dead on AMC. Game of Thrones offers another comparison. Over 6.6 million viewers watched the Season 4 premiere of that show on HBO.

The new season benefited from a tremendous tease to end Season 3. During the final minutes of that 2020 episode, John Dutton and his kids Beth and Kayce Dutton were under attack, leaving fans to wonder who — if anyone — survived. The pandemic lengthened the delay between seasons, and then excitement for the new season began to build organically as the show leaked teasers and trailers, plus details on a prequel called 1883 with Tim McGraw and Faith Hill.

The second part of the two-episode premiere drew just under eight million viewers. That's still over four million more than most episodes drew in 2020. The cast has indicated that Season 5 is in production, but the future beyond that is not clear. Earlier in November, Taste of Country talked to Cole Hauser, Gil Birmingham and Kelsey Asbille.

The next new episode of Yellowstone airs on Sunday (Nov. 14) on the Paramount Network. 1883 premieres on Dec. 19.

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