Stranger Things Season 5 Viewing Figures Are Huge

The latest season of Netflix’s sci-fi horror hit Stranger Things has shattered its own records and then some. Viewership numbers reportedly show that the first volume of season 5 racked up a staggering 59.6 million views in its first five days after release, making it the biggest debut ever for an English-language Netflix series.

This figure is pretty dramatic compared with season 4’s premiere. When volume 1 of season 4 launched in 2022, Netflix counted around 287 million hours streamed over its opening days. While this doesn’t directly translate to views, those hours are roughly equivalent to 22 million views, meaning that season 5’s figure represents about a 171% increase.

This figure also ranks the show among the streamer’s most-watched debuts, trailing behind only the second and third seasons of Squid Game, but this level of popularity was likely partly fueled by Netflix’s decision to make the final season of the show such a huge event, one that will culminate on New Year’s Eve.

High viewership hasn’t guaranteed unanimous praise for this season, though. One notable review has claimed that Stranger Things may be outgrowing its original appeal, given the extended time between seasons and the young cast having clearly aged so much in the meantime.

In the first four episodes of season 5, we caught up with the Hawkins gang as they tried to track down the villainous Vecna and get rid of him once and for all. The fourth episode concluded with a payoff for poor Will Byers, who has suffered any number of indignities since the show first began in 2016, but has finally unlocked his supernatural powers and link to the hive mind in the Upside Down.

You can bet that the final episodes of Stranger Things will also be one of the most-watched TV events of 2025, given that so many people logged on to watch the first volume last month that the service temporarily crashed.