Stranger Things Season 5 Officially Beats Its Biggest Netflix Rival (But There’s 1 Record It’ll Never Catch)

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As of this writing, Stranger Things Season 5 ranks No. 4 on Netflix’s list of its 10 most popular TV shows of all time. Since its release, it’s accumulated 120.1 million views and has been watched for 1.249 billion hours. This means it’s officially surpassed Wednesday Season 2, which netted 119.3 million views. That’s definitely an impressive showing for Stranger Things, but there’s one Netflix record it won’t catch.

Stranger Things Will Never Beat Wednesday Season 1’s Netflix Record

Image Courtesy of Netflix

Earlier this month, when Netflix shared its What We Watched report for the second half of 2025, Stranger Things Season 5 was actually the streamer’s second most-watched show. In the days since that report came out, it managed to close the gap and surpass Wednesday Season 2. This is due to the projects’ release dates; Wednesday Season 2 debuted over the summer, while Stranger Things Season 5 didn’t arrive until Thanksgiving. The full season wasn’t available to watch until New Year’s Eve, when the finale dropped. So it isn’t surprising that Stranger Things didn’t beat Wednesday Season 2 until a few weeks into 2026.

While Stranger Things topped the second season of Wednesday, it will likely never beat the record set by Wednesday Season 1. The first season of Wednesday is Netflix’s biggest TV show by far, racking up 252.1 million views and 1.718 billion hours watched. As of this writing, there is a difference of 132 million views between Stranger Things 5 and Wednesday Season 2. That might be too big of a deficit for Stranger Things to make up because Netflix’s all-time data is based on views from the first 91 days of release. Stranger Things Season 5 debuted 60 days ago, so it only has 31 more days to make up the gap. It would need to average around 4.25 million views per day to catch up to Wednesday Season 1.

Though Stranger Things Season 5 is still a relatively new release, the initial wave of hype surrounding its debut has died down. The series finale is nearly a month old now. In all likelihood, viewership for Stranger Things Season 5 should slow down from this point, similar to how business at the box office slows down the longer a movie stays in theaters. It was a massive draw when it first arrived because it was the big new thing and people wanted to be part of the pop culture conversation. Now, especially with the polarizing fan responses, interest should start to wane a bit. Stranger Things viewership isn’t about to fall off a cliff, it just won’t catch Wednesday Season 2.

While Wednesday Season 1 should remain on top of the charts, it’s easy to see why Netflix is interested in continuing the Stranger Things franchise with spinoffs (the animated series Stranger Things: Tales from ’85 and other projects are in the works). Since its premiere in 2016, Stranger Things has been one of Netflix’s biggest original programs, maintaining a high level of popularity throughout its entire run (Stranger Things 4 ranks third all-time on the TV list). It’ll be interesting to see if these other shows come close to rivaling the numbers posted by the mainline series.

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