How Many More Hours ‘Stranger Things’ Season 4 Needs To Beat Squid Game’s Netflix Record

For a long while there, it seemed like nothing would ever even come close to breaking Squid Game’s viewership record on Netflix, where the global phenomenon racked up 1.65 billion hours of viewing time in its first 28 days of release.

Now, a challenger has emerged, season 4 of Stranger Things, which now has a few more weeks to catch Squid Games. And it’s getting at least somewhat close, and may end the month neck and neck, if it doesn’t beat it outright. It kind of depends on how many people choose to watch the final two finale episodes multiple times.

Netflix has revealed that as of July 5, Stranger Things 28 day total is now 1.15 billion hours.

This includes both the 900+ million the initial seven episodes in season 4 part 1 got in their first 28 days, and then the first few days of season 4 part 2 viewing of the final episodes. Part 1 viewing does not count from here going forward.

So, at that mark, Stranger Things part 2 has 23 more days to get exactly 500 million more viewing hours to catch Squid Game’s total. That’s a tall order, considering that’s only two episodes, but Stranger Things fans can be pretty passionate, and I know that a lot of them are likely to watch those final two episodes, including the 2.5 hour finale, a few times. And that’s the other part of this, that even though it’s just two episodes, it’s 4 hours, while the first seven were 9 hours. By comparison Squid Game season is only 8.2 hours long, so technically, Stranger Things is at a pretty big advantage with season 4 being 13 hours long. Still, it may not beat it.

But what’s clear is that if Stranger Things season 4 doesn’t beat Squid Game, season 5 certainly might, given the hype generated from this past season, which is arguably the series’ best. Stranger Things is in a rare Game of Thrones-style situation where viewership is increasing year after year, and that seems like it will stay true for season 5. Squid Game is of course getting a second season as well, but I would be a little surprised if it passed the first one, and become the same level of phenomenon twice. It’s possible, but Stranger Things seems guaranteed to pass these numbers for season 5, while I’m not sure Squid Game season 2 will.

It also goes to show how much Netflix is going to miss Stranger Things when it’s over, which is why they’re letting the Duffer Brothers invent a spin-off, and giving them free reign on a bunch of other projects at the streaming service going forward. Will they ever make a hit this big again? We’ll have to see.

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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.