‘Stranger Things 5’ Scores Netflix’s Second Biggest Premiere Week Ever for a Series

 The final season of Stranger Things had its best opening week ever, and it was the second-biggest premiere for any Netflix original series.

The first four episodes of Stranger Things 5 got 59.6 million views worldwide in the five days after they premiered on November 26.

 That's the highest opening week total for any English-language series on Netflix so far, beating the 50.1 million views that season one of Wednesday got in November 2022. It's also the second-highest premiere in all languages, behind the 68 million views that season two of Squid Game got in its first week.

Stranger Things creators Matt and Ross Duffer said in a statement, "The sheer number of fans who have already watched Volume 1 is staggering — the response has been more than we ever could have dreamed."

 They added, "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 number one in 90 of the 93 territories Netflix tracks, and it made the top ten in the remaining three.

 The 59.6 million views were more than the combined total of the other shows in the English-language series top 10 — four of which were previous seasons of Stranger Things. The prior seasons had a combined total of 25.1 million views (calculated as total viewing hours divided by running time).

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 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.