Stranger Things Season 5 Scores a Netflix Record With 59.6 Million Views in First Five Days
Stranger Things Season 5 delivered a breakthrough debut on Netflix, setting a company-record pace for an English-language series. In its first five days of availability, the season racked up 59.6 million views. This marks the highest premiere-week viewership for any English-language Netflix series to date and places Season 5 as the third-best overall premiere, trailing only Seasons 2 and 3 of the Korean sci-fi hit Squid Game.
This debut also represents a substantial jump from the already strong launch of Season 4. In 2022, the series opened with 287 million hours watched, which Netflix reported differently at the time (as stream time rather than view counts), equivalent to about 22 million views under that metric. When you translate that comparison, Season 5’s debut shows roughly a 171% increase in views. It’s worth noting, however, that Season 5 counted views over five days, while Season 4’s tally was tallied over three days.
Season 5 isn’t just a one-week wonder. Ahead of the premiere, all four previous seasons made Netflix’s Top 10, marking the first time a single series had four different seasons charted simultaneously. The week of Nov. 24–30 saw five seasons on the Top 10: Season 5 at No. 1, Season 1 at No. 3 with 8.9 million views, Season 4 at No. 5 with 6.1 million views, Season 2 at No. 6 with 5.6 million views, and Season 3 at No. 8 with 4.6 million views.
Netflix released the first four episodes of Season 5 last week, with the remaining three dropping on Christmas Day and the series finale on New Year’s Eve. Given this rollout, the series is expected to stay on the Top 10 for weeks, if not months. Season 5 is also likely to join Netflix’s list of the platform’s most popular English-language TV titles, a list that currently features Season 4 at No. 3 with 140.7 million views in its first 91 days.
Other notable entries on Netflix Top 10 this week included Kevin Hart’s stand-up special Acting My Age debuting at No. 2 with 9.2 million views, and the Jingle Bell Heist film claiming the No. 1 spot on the movies chart with 19.3 million views.
See the Netflix Top 10 for Nov. 24–30, starting with English-language TV and movies, followed by non-English-language options.
