Homeland is having quite a year. Starting the season playing a strong second fiddle to its Dexter lead-in, the sophomore Showtime drama topped the serial killer mainstay for the first time ever on Sunday night.
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It also secured a new ratings high in the process. Homeland's 10 p.m. outing pulled in 2.2 million viewers. That outranks the previous series high by roughly 130,000 viewers, and, adding the numbers from an encore later in the evening, gives the show a nightly total of 2.5 million viewers.
Dexter was just shy with 2.1 million viewers at 9 p.m., though the series is by no means lagging. The current run of Dexter is averaging 6.02 million gross weekly viewers across platforms. That makes it the show's highest-rated season yet, up 12 percent from last year. For Sunday, Dexter also brought in a bigger audience with its encore, giving it a total of 2.63 million for the night.
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These strong numbers come just two weeks shy of the shows' respective finales. Both Dexter and Homeland, which are already renewed for respective eighth and third seasons, conclude their current run on Dec. 16.
Homeland, averaging 5.7 million total weekly viewers across platforms, is 34 percent from its freshman gross viewership.
