As “Stranger Things” closed out its five-season run with a long-awaited return this holiday season, the tentpole series had a seismic impact on both Netflix and the overall the TV landscape, setting records for the streamer from the jump.
Taking note from its previous split-season release for Season 4, “Stranger Things 5” embraced a split release schedule over the holidays to match the hefty nature of the final season, which bid farewell to characters introduced nearly a decade ago after a four-year break between seasons.
By the time “Stranger Things” released the first four episodes of Season 5 on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, Volume 1 broke Netflix records with 59.6 million views in its first five days on Netflix, becoming the biggest premiere week for an English language show in the history of the streamer.
It was an even bigger return viewership for Season 5 than “Wednesday,” Netflix’s most-watched English-language show ever (ahead of all past seasons of “Stranger Things”), which debuted the first four episodes of its second season in August 2025 to a whopping 50 million views in its first five days on the streamer.
Unlike other tentpole series like “Squid Game,” whose full-season launch creates an apples-to-oranges comparison, it’s a rather 1:1 comparison between “Stranger Things” and “Wednesday” given their debut windows, proving just how strongly the “Stranger Things” fandom showed up for the return.
The Volume 1 launch also broke records in the broader streaming landscape as “Stranger Things” tallied 8.46 billion viewing minutes during the week of Nov. 24, per Nielsen, shattering the company’s streaming top 10 record for biggest weekly viewing total by a streaming title by over 1 billion minutes, which previously belonged to “Stranger Things” as it logged 7.2 billion minutes during its Season 4 launch in 2022.
While Nielsen does not separate viewing by season, 57% of the 8.46 billion account for viewing minutes of Volume 1, with over one third of viewership directed towards catch-up for past seasons. This was also evident on Netflix’s top TV list throughout the show’s rollout, which has seen all past four seasons of “Stranger Things” in the top 10 every week since Volume 1’s premiere.
For comparison, the second most-watched streaming title during the week of Nov. 24 was Taylor Sheridan’s “Landman,” which scored an impressive streaming viewership of 1.34 billion minutes on Paramount+, but was six times smaller than the massive audience brought in by the “Stranger Things” Season 5 release.
And even as viewership slid down in the week following the Volume 1 debut, “Stranger Things” still dominated both the Netflix and Nielsen top premieres lists, outpacing the buzzy Diddy documentary, which took the No. 2 spot on both lists. During the week of Dec. 1, “Stranger Things 5” scored 23.6 million views while “Sean Combs: The Reckoning” earned 21.8 million views, according to Netflix, while Nielsen reports the cumulative “Stranger Things” seasons garnered 4.38 billion minutes, doubling the 2.28 billion minutes for the docuseries.
“Stranger Things 5” followed up its Volume 1 release with a three-episode Volume 2 on Christmas Day, which boosted Netflix, with the help of its two NFL games, to its most-watched Christmas to date. The Volume 2 debut boosted “Stranger Things” Season 5 to reach 34.5 million views during the week of Dec. 22, a viewership that more than doubled the release of “Emily in Paris” Season 5.
Given that Netflix calculates views by hours viewed divided by runtime, numbers for the Volume 1 drop were always bound to be higher than the Volume 2 drop, whose hours views is divided by the runtime for seven episodes, as opposed to just four from the first part. The same can be said for the debut of the two-hour series finale on New Year’s Eve, which boosted Season 5 to reach an additional 31.3 million views. The finale also boosted Netflix to reach its most-watched New Year’s Day, a feat achieved by the show without any NFL games.
The finale’s streaming viewership reported by Netflix represents only a portion of fans tuning in for the conclusion of the series, with plenty of the fandom watching the finale in theaters during its short viewing window from Dec. 31, 2025 at 5 p.m. through Jan. 1, 2026. For its less than 48-hour stint at the theaters, the finale scored $25 million at the box office over New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day in 600 theaters, according to early industry estimates.
The finale launch also got “Stranger Things 5” into Netflix’s most popular TV list of all time, landing in the No. 9 spot with 105.7 million total views combined since its initial Volume 1 drop on Nov. 26, behind “Bridgerton” Season 3 and ahead of “The Night Agent” Season 1. “Stranger Things 5” is only 35 million views away from “Stranger Things 4,” which sits in the No. 3 spot as the only “Stranger Things” season in the top 10. It could take a week or two (or worst case, three) for Season 5 to get there, but it is certainly possible.
“Stranger Things 5” still has some time to accrue views, with viewing for Volume 1 being tallied through late February 24, views for Volume 2 and the finale being tallied through late March, per Netflix’s 91-day viewing policy.
Football dominates New Year’s week programming
During the first week of the new year, football dominated Nielsen’s list of top programming across broadcast, cable and streaming, with the Rose Bowl and CFP quarterfinal between Alabama and Indiana marking the week’s total program with 22.8 million viewers, per live-plus-same-day figures, while the Jan. 4 Steelers-Ravens game was the week’s No. 2 program with 22.3 million viewers.
College and NFL football accounted for the top 20 programs during the week, with the exception of ABC’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve, which took the No. 5 spot with 19.5 million viewers.
ABC News’ “The Year: 2025” grows double-digits from last year
The Robin Roberts-hosted special, which celebrated its 15th year, tallied up 3.9 million viewers within its first three days of viewing on ABC, Disney + and Hulu, growing 37% from last year. On linear, the ABC News primetime special scored 3.7 million viewers and 584,000 viewers among adults 25-54, ranking as the No. 1 program on Monday, excluding sports. Its linear viewership also made strides over last year’s special, with total viewership up 35% and demo viewers up 25%.
Thursday Night Football breaks records for Prime Video
Prime Video scored its most-watched season of Thursday Night Football on record, with the 2025 season of TNF averaging 15.3 million viewers throughout its 15-game campaign, soaring 16% over the 2024 season and marking the third-consecutive year of double-digit, year-over-year viewership growth.
The post Inside the Ratings: Just How Big Is ‘Stranger Things 5?’ appeared first on TheWrap.
