SANTA MONICA, Calif. — After a 20-month absence, “Game of Thrones” stormed back on Sunday night, setting a new ratings record.

The season premiere of the show’s eighth — and final — season had 17.4 million viewers, including viewership through its digital channels, HBO said. The previous record for a single episode of the series was 16.9 million, for the seventh-season finale in August 2017.

HBO had 11.8 million viewers watching it the old-fashioned way on regular television, according to Nielsen. That narrowly missed the record of 12.1 million who watched the seventh-season finale on television.

When there are more television shows than ever and so many of them are watched on viewers’ own schedules, “Thrones” is one of the few hit series left that qualify as appointment viewing.