Spoilers below for the seemingly few people who haven’t yet watched Yellowstone‘s midseason premiere.

Absence often makes the heart grow fonder, whether we’re talking about long-distance relationships, kids going off to college, or one of TV”s most popular shows being off the air for nearly two full years. Yellowstone finally returned with the final episodes of Season 5 (without confirming yet if Season 6 is happening or not), though without Kevin Costner’s John Dutton as the central patriarch. And it somehow managed to earn the western drama’s biggest audience ever to date.

“Desire Is All You Need” Was Yellowstone’s Biggest Debut Ever

Already, Yellowstone seemed destined to take over the ratings game well before it actually came back, just based how wildly popular the show got between the third and fourth seasons. Add to that all the newer viewers that were accumulated during the extended hiatus, thanks in part to CBS airing the first two seasons during the strikes. And such expectations were not dashed in the slightest.

Yellowstone‘s midseason premiere brought in 16.4 million viewers on Sunday night alone across both cable and broadcast, with CBS also serving as a co-launch spot for that episode alone. (Not to mention CMT and other Paramount channels simulcasting it.) That number alone crushes just about any other kind of TV programming outside of NFL games and select other sports contests.

But the news gets even more impressive once Live + 3 Day delayed viewing stats are totaled up. According to Paramount, the total viewership rose an impressive 29%, with somewhere around 5 million additional pairs of eyeballs joining the fray.

So at this point, “Desire Is All You Need” has been viewed by more than 21 million people, which easily makes it the most-watched Yellowstone ep for such a short time period. While those kinds of numbers used to be the norm during the ’90s and early 2000s, it’s generally rare for shows to break into double digits before Live + 7 or Live + 30 stats are measured.

On the one hand, it makes total sense, since so many millions of people were eager to learn how Taylor Sheridan & Co. handled John Dutton’s story in lieu of Kevin Costner’s exit. The lead-up to the return was kept behind a veil of secrecy that was even more prominent than the follow-up to the explosions that capped off Season 3’s cliffhanger ending.

Still, it’s shocking to see that this series could somehow eclipse itself even without the mega movie star that helped drive the audience up to such levels in the first place. That’s Yellowstone math for you.

‘Yellowstone’ Becomes First Series to Top List of Titles Consumers Are Most Excited About Since ‘Fallout’

“Yellowstone” rises to No. 1 during the week of its highly anticipated Season 5 Part 2 premiere. This is the first TV show to reach No. 1 since Amazon Studio’s “Fallout” in April, and Part 2 has generated more excitement than Season 5 Part 1 back in 2022.

Yellowstone Became Paramount+’s Biggest Debut Outside The U.S.

Paramount also confirmed that Yellowstone isn’t just a top dog domestically, but it’s also become the biggest premiere internationally for any series launch day on Paramount+. Those specific numbers weren’t disclosed, but it’s confirmed that the episode bypassed all other Yellowstone premieres to take the top spot.

The western drama is said to be the biggest source of traffic and viewership for Paramount+ outside the U.S., where streaming rights are tied to Peacock subscriptions. It’s apparently also the biggest driver of new subscriptions in various other countries where the service is offered.

It’d be great to know just how well the show is doing with key demographics, but those detailed stats may not be available for a spell. Paramount is still embroiled in a contractual disagreement with Nielsen, so the studio’s viewership stats are technically estimations based on a number of different data points, but likely are close enough to the real numbers that the announcement won’t come back to bite them like a tent-breaching rattlesnake.

Yellowstone airs Sunday nights on Paramount Network at 8:00 p.m. Anybody else keeping their minds open for Kevin Costner to make a cameo return in the finale?