‘Stranger Things’ Is Moments Away From Demolishing This Netflix Record

Of course Stranger Things is a hit show with a massive audience. But come Monday morning, the beloved series will stand above all other shows on NetflixNFLX
as the top dog in at least one category—bigger than Tiger King, bigger than The Queen’s Gambit, and (yes) bigger than Squid Game.

You may have noticed last week that the fourth season Stranger Things had dropped to second place in the weekly Netflix popularity rankings. Virgin River’s fourth season took over the top spot with 105.44 million hours of watch time. But Stranger Things—in its ninth week on the Netflix charts—really wasn’t far behind with 74.99 million hours. Which means that this late into the fourth season’s run, it’s still posting numbers within earshot of the #1 spot.

That’s good news for Stranger Things, as the show needs to continue its legendary momentum to set a pretty huge milestone on Netflix, to break a record set by both Squid Game and The Queen’s Gambit. In total, Squid Game spent 79 days on the Top 10 charts last year, with 78 of those days being consecutive—that’s the record. And Squid Game shares that streak with The Queen’s Gambit, which saw its 78-day streak stretch between late 2020 and early 2021.

But both of those shows had fallen further down the daily charts than Stranger Things has after 69 days of eligibility. Yesterday, in fact, marked the lowest showing yet for Stranger Things on the daily Top 10 charts…in the third place position. That means the show had yet to fall out of the top two spots after 67 consecutive days on the charts. That is unprecedented. Squid Game, for instance, fell below the second-place position after 47 days. The Queen’s Gambit’s streak only lasted 40 days. And Tiger King? Just 29 days. So if Stranger Things stays hot for just ten more days, then it’ll easily demolish that 78-day record.

But does that make Stranger Things the biggest show ever on Netflix? Perhaps not. While Stranger Things may end up having a longer streak on the daily charts, it seems as though Squid Game will continue to stand above the rest. In total, the fourth season of Stranger Things’s watch time adds up to 1.627 billion hours—which is now the second-highest total since Netflix started to publish Top 10 statistics. The top spot belongs to the first season of Squid Game, however, with 2.29 billion hours.

Plus, the total is likely much higher for Squid Game, as Netflix only reports weekly watch time if a show stands as one of the ten most popular shows in that given week. Which means the program has likely racked up close to 3 billion hours by this point.

But if we narrow total watch time to the moments where show’s appear in the Top 10, then Stranger Things still has an outside shot of breaking the record. It seems unlikely, though, as the first season Squid Game accrued 1.903 billion hours in its first six weeks of worldwide domination—whereas the fourth season of Stranger Things only mustered 1.261 billion. While that easily makes Stranger Things the most dominant english-language show on Netflix, Squid Game still stands above the rest.