New episodes of sci-fi series achieve 59.6m views in first five days of release, a new record for an English language show
The upside-down is still the right way for Netflix – Stranger Things 5 is now the company’s biggest English-language debut ever.
The fifth season of the streaming company’s flagship sci-fi series achieved 59.6m views in its first five days on the platform, making for the best premiere week for an English-language series ever on Netflix, and the third biggest debut overall behind the second and third seasons of the Korean sensation Squid Game.
The huge debut, which saw the first four of the final eight episodes drop at once, also marks a significant jump in viewership from the fourth installment, which opened to 287m hours watched in 2022, when Netflix measured viewership in stream time instead of views. That total translates to about 22m views, meaning season 5 saw a 171% increase, according to Variety, though it should be noted that the fifth season total included five days of viewing, while Stranger Things 4’s premiere only counted three.
The day before the long-awaited final season, all previous Stranger Things seasons landed in Netflix’s top 10, a first for any show on the streaming platform. The influx of viewers caused the platform to temporarily freeze during the premiere, even after Netflix “increased bandwidth by 30% to avoid a crash”, according to the series co-creator Ross Duffer on his Instagram.
