FX has found a winner with its motorcycle gang drama Sons of Anarchy. The numbers for Sons of Anarchy’s final season premiere are up from last year, with 6.2 million total viewers tuning in for the 10 p.m. premiere. That’s up 5% from last September’s premiere, making SOA’s Season 7’s debut the best season opener to date.
The Sons of Anarchy premiere may have crushed in total viewers, producing the best numbers so far, but the show also did respectably in the advertising demo. Deadline is reporting the show pulled in 4.2 million viewers in the 18-49 demographic, which also happens to be an improvement over the 3.94 million people that tuned in last year. Jax may be feeling down, but the numbers are definitely looking up.
It’s no wonder more people are tuning in to the series. It’s the last season of the popular drama, and viewers may be making more of an effort to tune in live. Additionally, FX has done a great job of teasing Season 7 over the last several months, releasing plenty of footage and teasers to build hype over the new episodes. The premiere was an interesting episode, which picked up in the time after Tara’s death, with Gemma trying to cover her tracks and Jax busy dealing with his rage. I’m not going to say it was the most emotionally scarring episode Sons of Anarchy has ever released, but it picked up at a great spot, carrying over from last season, and it’s easy to see why interest was high for the episode.
With a little luck, Sons of Anarchy’s final season will follow the same sort of trajectory as AMC’s harrowing drama Breaking Bad. Like the recently ended meth drama, Sons of Anarchy’s ratings have improved over time. If they continue to improve in the coming weeks, the finale might yield the kind of ratings the cable network doesn’t see very often. It's totally possible. Breaking Bad, for instance, closed out with a whopping 10.3 million total viewers tuning in to see what would happen to Walter White. I’m not saying anyone can do better than Walter White, because only Rick Grimes and Leroy Gibbs crush that hard in the ratings, but I get the feeling the Sons of Anarchy finale will be for FX what Bad was for AMC.
If you want to join the gang, you can tune in to FX on Tuesday nights at 10 p.m. ET for new episodes of Sons of Anarchy. Everyone else should go binge watch the series on Netflix immediately.
