Gaten Matarazzo, Finn Wolfhard, Caleb McLaughlin and Noah Schnapp in season five of ‘Stranger Things.’

The final season of Stranger Things roared to its best opening week ever —and the second-biggest premiere for any Netflix original series.

Advertisement

The first four episodes of Stranger Things 5 racked up 59.6 million views worldwide in the five days after their Nov. 26 premiere, according to Netflix’s first-party data. That’s the highest opening week total to date for any English-language series on the streamer —passing the 50.1 million views for season one of Wednesday in November 2022 — and second among shows in all languages, behind only the 68 million views for season two of Squid Game in its first week.

“The sheer number of fans who have already watched Volume 1 is staggering — the response has been more than we ever could have dreamed,” Stranger Things creators Matt and Ross Duffer said in a statement. “The show is now a decade old, and seeing the fanbase not only endure but continue to grow has been incredibly rewarding for us, the actors, and the thousands of artists who helped bring this story to life. We truly cannot thank everyone enough, and we are beyond excited to share Volume 2 — there’s so much more to come.”

The final season of Stranger Things was No. 1 in 90 of the 93 territories Netflix tracks (and made the top ten in the remaining three). The 59.6 million views was more than the combined total of the other shows in the English-language series top 10 —four of which were the previous seasons of Stranger Things. The prior seasons had a cumulative 25.1 million views (calculated as total viewing hours divided by running time).

Mad Men 4K Streaming Hit by Technical Glitches on HBO Max

The four episodes of season five had 284.2 million hours of watch time worldwide, slightly less than the 286.9 million hours for the opening of season four (which debuted with seven episodes) in May 2022. At that time, Netflix didn’t use its current formula for views. But with a run time of more than nine hours, those seven episodes generated about 31.13 million views.

The first four episodes of season five clock in at a little under five hours, making a subscriber’s investment of time to watch the first batch considerably shorter —and a view that much easier to attain for Netflix.