'The Walking Dead' season 7 news: Ratings lowest since season 3; episode 6 brings Tara to the seaside

Maggie (Cohan) in "The Walking Dead" season 7 episode 5 AMC

It looks like the ratings aren't looking so good for the seventh season of AMC's popular dystopian zombie series, "The Walking Dead."

According to a report by Entertainment Weekly, after the premiere of its seventh earlier last month, the notoriously popular series "The Walking Dead" has been experiencing a steady and sharp decline each and every week a new episode airs. The fifth episode of the new season which aired this Sunday, Nov. 2, has been hailed as the episode with the lowest viewer ratings ever since season 3 of "the Walking Dead."

While the season 7 premiere of "The Walking Dead" nabbed a whopping 17 million viewers, it seems like reactions to the new season's debut has been majorly mixed. While some fans enjoyed the 1.5-hour premiere episode, others believed that the series has crossed a certain line with the brutal and bloody sadism of Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), promising that they would ditch the show for good. While fans threatening to quit shows usually don't fall through, it seems like promises to leave "The Walking Dead" has affected the series so much as to majorly affect the show's ratings.

After the overwhelming viewership numbers during its season 7 premiere, the series' ratings dropped to 25 percent during its second episode with 12.5 million viewers. After that, the series dropped to 11. 7 million viewers on its third episode, 11.4 million on its fourth, and now 11 million on its fifth. Though the differences don't seem that radical, the steady decline is a rare case that the series hasn't experienced ever since season 3 in 2013.

Hopefully, the next episode of "The Walking Dead" would bring the ratings back up with the series taking viewers to the seaside with Alanna Masterson's Tara. While Movie Fone reports that fans are going to see Tara almost getting killed by a young girl in an all-female group, the episode titled "Swear" will take viewers to a new society that no one in "The Walking Dead" has ever seen before.

"Swear" airs next Sunday, Nov. 27, 2016, at 9 p.m. EST on AMC. 

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