‘Dahmer’ Is Netflix’s Second Highest Viewed English Language Show Ever

Dahmer has planted itself at the #1 spot on Netflix for weeks now, and it has crossed half a billion hours viewed, Now, fresh data is revealing new heights for the serial killer drama. With 701.37 million hours viewed, Dahmer is the second most-viewed English Netflix series of all time, and the fourth highest across any language. Soon, it’ll be top there.

Netflix measures this for data within the first 28 days of release, presumably to try to compare apples to apples when some shows are brand new and others have been airing for years. With that in mind, here’s the list as it stands, with Dahmer’s inclusion:

1. Squid Game season 1 – 1.65 billion hours
2. Stranger Things season 4 – 1.35 billion hours
3. Money Heist season 5 – 792.23 million hours
4. Dahmer – 701.37 million hours
5. Bridgerton season 2 – 656.25 million hours

There are nine days left in Dahmer’s 28 day premiere window to rack up more time viewed, and its current trajectory suggests it will pass Money Heist by the end, but Stranger Things is out of reach. Still, the show has wildly outperformed anyone’s expectations, perhaps not at the level of a surprise hit like Squid Game, but at least…half that much, as you can see.

The list also suggests a wide gap between #1 and #2 on the site currently, as Mike Flanagan’s The Midnight Club, out on October 7, only racked up 18.79 million hours over the weekend, suggesting some level of underperformance even as it sits at #2. In short, Dahmer is absolutely dominating everything else on the list, as it has been since it premiered. Nothing has come close to toppling it yet.

Unlike every other show on the most-viewed list, it’s impossible for Dahmer to have a second season and it was never meant to. Netflix will no doubt try to squeeze some Emmys out of it in the Limited Series category, and it remains to be seen how they’ll try to build on its success as they have with all its other top hits. Despite being such a sensitive topic, focused on a real killer whose victims still have surviving family members (many of whom have protested the show), Netflix has chosen to ignore all that pushback and is just concentrated on the audience it has attracted. I would absolutely not put it past them if they tried to get the Dahmer team to take on Ed Gein or John Wayne Gacy, other killers who were briefly featured in the series. But nothing like that has been announced yet.

As for what will eventually unseat Dahmer as its viewing hours wind down, I am honestly not seeing anything stand out over the next few weeks short of The Crown’s return for season 5 on November 9. Surely it won’t stay on top that long but…maybe? Never say never, as this show has outpaced anyone’s wildest expectations for it already.

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