'Empire' finale ratings jump ... again

Fox's Empire won't stop building.

Wednesday's eventful two-hour season finale averaged a record 16.7 million viewers, according to updated Nielsens, up 12% from 14.9 million for last week's one-hour episode. (The red-hot show drew 17.6 million for its final hour).

Among young adults, Empire climbed 16% from last week, and through 12 hours, now ranks as the top-rated network series among viewers ages 18 to 49, eclipsing CBS's The Big Bang Theory, with only original episodes counted. Fox also crowed that Wednesday marked the top-rated night of entertainment programming among that crowd since American Idol's January 2012 season premiere.

And the show the big, again, on social media: 4.2 million U.S. Facebook users generated 15.8 million likes, comments or shares, and fans posted 2.4 million tweets about the show.

The finale featured an attempted smothering, a death, an arrest, an initial public stock offering and a plotted hostile takeover, among many other plot twists. But the cliffhangers won't be resolved until fall, when the show is expected to return for an expanded (but not full) season of about 18 episodes.