‘Wednesday’ Becomes Netflix’s Third Most Watched Show Ever As Fans Wait For Season 2 Announcement

Week four viewership for Netflix’s Wednesday is in, and the Jenna Ortega megahit has etched its place in the streaming service’s all-time best-performers list, and is likely to stay there for quite a while.

With these final numbers in, we now can see that this debut season of Wednesday is the third most-watched season of a show in its opening four weeks in Netflix history, which is the primary metric Netflix tracks. It’s in second place behind only Squid Game if we’re talking first seasons only, as Stranger Things had three previous seasons to lead up to the blockbuster numbers that season 4 put up this past year.

Here is the top 10 list as it stands right now:

1. Squid Game (season 1) — 1.65 billion hours
2. Stranger Things (season 4) — 1.35 billion hours.
3. Wednesday — 1.2 billion hours
4. Dahmer — 856.2 million hours
5. Money Heist (part 5) — 792.2 million hours.
6. Bridgerton (season 2) — 656.3 million hours
7. Bridgerton (season 1) — 625.5 million hour
8. Money Heist (part 4) — 619 million hours
9. Stranger Things (season 3) — 582.1 million hours
10. Lucifer (season 5) — 569.5 million hours

Dahmer did go on to pass a billion hours, but two months after it debuted, not one month, as this chart shows. Wednesday going past a billion hours makes it only the fourth season of a show to ever do that, and three of the four shows that have done so were all out in 2022. It’s been a very good year for Netflix originals, despite other issues the service faces in a larger downturn for the streaming space.

As expected, Wednesday fell just short of Stranger Things season 4, but it may stand to reason that Wednesday season 2 may pass it. Though I expect Stranger Things season 5 to pass them both, and maybe Squid Game as well. We’ll see if Squid Game season 2 ever actually gets here.

While Netflix has confirmed Squid Games season 2, Stranger Things season 5 and two more “Monster” seasons focusing on other killers after Dahmer’s success, the service still has yet to officially announce or confirm Wednesday season 2. With these kind of numbers, it’s not really question whether that renewal is coming, and I’d probably expect a double-season renewal announcement, if not some master five year Wednesday plan. They clearly have struck gold here, and when Netflix does that, they tend to double or triple down on those projects. But even with hit shows, Netflix tends to wait a little while to announce renewals all the same. Now that this first month has passed, however, I’d expect an announcement relatively soon.

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