After a three-year wait, “Stranger Things” is back and once again scoring impressive viewership stats for Netflix. Season 4 volume 1 broke the record for biggest-ever premiere weekend of an English-language series, which was previously held by Season 2 of “Bridgerton.”
According to Netflix’s newly released Top 10 rankings, Season 4 of the Duffer Brothers’ hit sci-fi series was viewed for 287 million hours during the week of May 23-30, landing in the No. 1 position. This comes after only three days of availability, as Part 1 of the season debuted with seven episodes on Friday.
All four seasons of “Stranger Things” made it back into Netflix’s Top 5 titles for the week of May 23-30.
Taking the No. 3 spot with 28 million hours viewed was Season 1 of “Stranger Things,” which first crept back into the Top 10 last week as fans rewatched the series in preparation for Season 4. Season 3 followed right behind in fourth place with 24.2 million hours, followed by Season 2 in fifth place with 22.2 million hours.
For comparison, “Bridgerton” Season 2 was viewed for 193 million hours over its debut weekend, which occurred during the week of March 21-27. That impressive three-day viewership was a record-breaker for the streamer, with “Bridgerton” Season 2 becoming the most-watched Netflix English-language TV title in its premiere weekend in Netflix history. Now, “Stranger Things 4” holds that title and broke the “Bridgerton” record by nearly 50%.
In October 2019, Netflix said “Stranger Things 3” was the show’s most-watched season to date, with 64 million member households consuming it within the first month of its launch. In its first four days, Netflix says more than 40 million people watched the third season of “Stranger Things.” It’s impossible to draw a true apples-to-apples comparison between the premiere performance of “Stranger Things 3” to “Stranger Things 4,” given that the third season came during the time period when Netflix was still counting a “view” of a title as having seen at least 70% of one episode. The streamer later decided watching at least two minutes of a show or movie was a view. Now, Netflix calculates viewership by total hours watched, which is how its weekly Top 10 list is presented.
“Stranger Things” became a flagship series for Netflix immediately upon its debut in 2016, which introduced young actors Millie Bobby Brown, Finn Wolfhard, Gaten Matarazzo and Caleb McLaughlin opposite seasoned veterans including Winona Ryder and David Harbour. Buzz surrounding the new episodes has remained steady even after three years without updates.
Recently, the show made headlines after Netflix announced Season 4’s unusual runtimes. The shortest episode is 63 minutes minutes long while Episode 7 clocks in at a movie-length 98 minutes — which certainly helps to boost the show’s chart ranking — and the as of yet unreleased Season 4 finale will run for nearly two and a half hours.
Part 2 of “Stranger Things” Season 4 will arrive on Netflix on July 1, consisting of two episodes. The series has already been renewed for its fifth and final season.
See Netflix’s Top 10 lists for the week of May 23-30 below, beginning with English-language series and followed by non-English-language TV shows, English-language movies and then non-English-language movies.
From Variety US