The least viewed episode of Game Of Thrones, The Kingsroad, is only the second episode ever, bringing in only 2.2 million viewers. This base fact suggests a chunk of the audience left after not being drawn into the first hour - that's how it works with most shows, with things rarely matching an assured start. But with Thrones things were different. Even before word of mouth had people binge-watching entire seasons in a day, the show was doing a good job of keeping people addicted - there was only a drop by 0.2 million between the first and second episode (the premiere got 2.22 million), meaning most people were hooked from the start.