Sunday’s seventh season premiere of AMC’s The Walking Dead drew the second most watched episode in the show’s history, according to Nielsen.

The controversial Oct. 23 season premiere episode of the zombie-themed series -- which culminated in the grizzly deaths of two of the show’s main characters -- drew a whopping 17 million viewers, the second most-watched episode in the show’s history behind only the 17.3 million drawn for the Oct. 12, 2014 episode, according to Nielsen.

On the social media front, the episode also drew more than 6 million unique Twitter and Facebook interactions, second only to the 16.8 million interactions generated by the Oct. 19 Presidential Debate during the week of Oct. 17-23, according to Nielsen.

Two weeks ago, AMC renewed the popular series for an eighth season.

'The Walking Dead's' Most Watched Episodes

Date                  Total Viewers

10/14/14            17.3 million

10/23/16            17.0 million

10/13/13            16.1 million

3/29/15              15.7 million

2/9/14               15.7 million

Source: Nielsen