HBO’s Game of Thrones premiered its third season to great numbers last night. The first episode dealt with problems from the Onion Knight, the White Walkers, Tywin Lannister, and even a battle lost by Robb’s men. All of those great plots added together brought in 4.4 million total viewers during the Season 3 premiere. HBO’s big on the repeats and by the end of the evening, the show brought in 6.7 million total viewers.

That may not seem like a ton of viewers for a show that earns plenty of press; however, for HBO these are really great numbers for two reasons, the first being that people have to pay extra for the subscription cable service and the second being that HBO’s viewers are at leisure to watch the series, thanks to the network’s excellent On Demand system. Besides, EW is reporting the show was actually up 13% from the Game of Thrones Season 2 premiere, becoming the “most-watched” premiere for the series, so far.

However, last night’s numbers could have been even better had the series premiered on a different weekend. Last night was bad for two reasons. The first is that ratings are typically down on holiday weekends, including Easter weekend, which was yesterday. The second was that the Game of Thrones’ premiere was forced to compete with The Walking Dead’s finale, and since there is some crossover in the fan bases, this could have brought the numbers down a bit.

Hopefully, people will stay invested in the program and will continue to increase the ratings next week. If you’d like to contribute, you can tune in to HBO’s Game of Thrones Sunday nights at 9 p.m. ET.