AMC's post-apocalyptic television series "The Walking Dead's" eighth season was off to a rough start, with its premiere having comparably much lower viewer ratings than season 7's opener. Worse, the second episode had seemed to carry the curse.
Season 8 for "The Walking Dead" has not been faring well in terms of ratings, as seen in recent numbers for the second episode titled "The Damned." The number of viewers from the premiere had dropped further by 20 percent. The Oct. 29 episode only garnered a 4.0 rating in 18 to 49 years old category, roughly 8.9 million viewers.
The show had hit a low with the second episode of "The Walking Dead" season 8, having the lowest ratings since the second run of the show. It is the lowest rating the show had since March 11, 2012, when the second to the last episode of the second season was aired.
Though this was bad news for "The Walking Dead," it was still Sunday's most-watched cable show. Following the zombie-themed series was "Talking Dead" and NFL Football.
It seemed that the show was heading downhill. The season 7 premiere titled "The Day Will Come When You Won't Be," aired on Oct. 24, 2016, garnered an 8.4 rating and 16.4 million 18-49 adult viewers, as compared to the 5.0 rating of this season's opener, titled "Mercy." Many attribute the sharp decline in viewers in the show's habit of killing off fan-favorites like Glenn (Steven Yeun) and Abraham (Michael Cudlitz), who were viciously executed on the seventh season's premiere.
That said, "The Walking Dead" season 8 might be able to recover with the comeback of a season 1 character, Morales (Juan Gabriel Pareja) in the upcoming episode. Fans might anticipate how Morales had survived and what had happened to his family who headed to Birmingham in the first season.
"The Walking Dead" season 8 airs every Sunday, at 9 p.m. EDT on AMC.
