Surrounded by a whirlwind of media coverage and critical praise, the AMC drama “Breaking Bad” began its final run of eight episodes on Sunday night with the biggest audience in the show’s history, 5.9 million viewers.

The hugely discussed episode – it was the subject of more than 750,000 messages on Twitter on Sunday – proved its potency in the category most desired by many television advertisers: viewers between 18 and 49 years old. The episode reached 3.6 million viewers in that group, the second-best number of the year on cable television, topped only by another AMC hit, “The Walking Dead,” which hit 8.1 million in that category.

The total audience was up more than 100 percent from the previous season premiere for “Breaking Bad,” 2.9 million total viewers.

“Breaking Bad” has been the standard-bearer for the television trend of “binge watching,” so an increase was to be expected as new viewers have been joining the series. But few shows more than double their audience in their final season.