Fans of the medieval fantasy series ‘Game of Thrones’ tuned into HBO in droves on Sunday night for the season two premiere. Deadline is reporting that the show pulled in a total of 3.9 million viewers during its original airtime, and then a total of 6.3 million viewers including the encore performances. These numbers surpass their previous record of 3 million viewers racked up by the Season 1 finale back in June. Compared to the show’s series premiere last year, the viewership is up 74%. Numbers like that can practically guarantee that the suits in corporate will grant the sophomore series a third season.

Despite being on a channel that has less subscribers than it’s competition, GoT whooped the season two premiere of AMC’s ‘The Killing’, which only had 1.8 million viewers, and the latest episode of the extremely popular ‘Mad Men’, which drew in 2.9 million viewers.

With that many people tuning in, I’ll bet that the ‘Game of Thrones’ crew hopes they get those kinds of numbers when their multiplatform RPG video game based on the series hits the shelves later this month on May 15th.