Sequence from the final season of the series “Stranger Things” on Netflix, PHOTO: Netflix Media Center
The series “Stranger Things,” which premiered on Netflix in 2016, ended on New Year's Eve with its fifth season. The sheer number of subscribers who flocked to Netflix to watch the latest episode caused the platform to crash.
Episode 8, which concluded Season 5 of “Stranger Things” and with it the entire series, was released on Netflix on January 1 at 03:00. The unusual release time is due to the fact that in the US the episode will also be released in cinemas.
The sheer number of subscribers who flocked to Netflix to watch the final episode of Stranger Things, titled “Where To Be,” caused the platform to crash. Netflix also experienced technical issues a few weeks prior to the season 5 premiere in November.
The platform crashed right at 17:00 (Pacific time), 03:00 Romanian time, exactly when the final was released Stranger Things 5. The crash lasted about a minute and was fixed after a few page refreshes. As last time, users were met with an error image accompanied by the message: “Something went wrong. We're sorry, we're having trouble with your request. You'll find lots of things to explore on the main page.”
Waking up since 2 am just to watch Netflix crash unreal craze stranger Things finale pic.twitter.com/cM0EYLCWOk
— pill of billl (@Igprincex89) January 1, 2026
During the Nov. 26 outage, Netflix was down for about five minutes when the first four episodes of Season 5 were released.
Released in the summer of 2016, Stranger Things garnered ardent fans almost immediately, with one of the things that quickly stood out being the many references to 80s pop culture. Since then, the series has become a pop culture phenomenon in its own right, with a franchise that has grown to include a series of novels and comics, several video games, an extensive range of licensed products, and a play that premiered in November 2023 in the West End, the famous British theater stage, and then on Broadway.
Among other things, the series Stranger Things it propelled Millie Bobby Brown to the status of the highest-paid young actress in the world, brought Winona Ryder back to the fore as a leading actress after a period in which her career had fallen into a shadow cone, and made David Harbor a sought-after actor in Hollywood for “blockbuster” films. The previous season of Stranger Thingsreleased on Netflix in 2022, was one of the most watched productions in the history of the streaming platform, with more than 142 million unique views and more than 546 million hours of viewing.
But perhaps most telling of the show's success and status as a pop culture icon was the way songs like Running Up That Hill of British performer Kate Bush and Master of Puppets by Metallica have returned to the top of the music charts decades after their release, after being featured on the soundtrack of Stranger Things.
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