HBO Max appears to have been maxed out.
On Sunday night at 10 pm ET, when HBO’s highly anticipated Mare of Easttown season finale was to have started, social media erupted with reports that the cabler’s streaming service — which only days ago celebrated its first birthday — was down for many subscribers. Some users speculated that HBO Max could not handle the Kate Winslet-led murder mystery’s finale-night traffic.
After about a half-hour of mid-level Twitter panic, kvetching, some quality ha-has and the launch of some memes, the problem appeared to resolve itself for at least some, if not all, of those who ran into it.
Viewers who access HBO Max through a Hulu add-on reportedly did not experience playback issues. HBO viewers were entirely unaffected.
Aakwd for comment, an HBO Max spokesperson told TVLine at 11:15 pm, “Some HBO Max users experienced Intermittent service disruptions this evening, but the issue was quickly resolved and service has been restored.”
Mare of Easttown has been an increasingly impressive performer through its freshman run. Its penultimate episode delivered two million viewers last Sunday night across all platforms, more than doubling its total premiere night performance in April and nearly tripling its digital viewership since debut.
The May 23 episode also marked Mare of Easttown‘s third week as the No. 1 series on HBO Max and its fifth consecutive week of growth. (The only other HBO series to grow every week throughout its first season was The Undoing, which went on to average more than 13 million viewers per episode across all of HBO’s platforms.)