Stranger Things Just Got Beaten By Another Netflix Series
Stranger Things has been crushing Netflix viewing numbers, but it just got taken down a peg by one of its fellows.
Stranger Things is no doubt one of the most popular series on Netflix, and its fourth season has been tearing up the streaming charts for four weeks. However, its reign has finally come to an end, as Netflix’s series The Umbrella Academy just pushed it into second place for the week of June 20-26. The Umbrella Academy managed to pull in 2.45 billion minutes viewed, as opposed to the 2.33 billion that Stranger Things put up. This is down from the 2.95 billion minutes Stranger Things had last week.
We’ll have to see how long The Umbrella Academy can hold on to the top spot. The new season of the series was released on June 22, but Stranger Things released the last two feature-length episodes of the fourth season on July 1. These episodes will be included in next week’s Nielsen ratings, so The Umbrella Academy could very well be dethroned after only holding the crown for a week.
The Umbrella Academy and Stranger Things definitely don’t seem to be in any danger of going any lower than first and second place at this time. The next show on the list is the Disney+ series Obi-Wan Kenobi, which managed to get 860 million minutes of viewing. While this is nothing to sneeze at, it’s nothing compared to the multi-billion numbers the two top Netflix series are pulling in.
Overall, Netflix is sitting pretty on the Original Series streaming charts, taking up six of the top ten spots. In addition to The Umbrella Academy and Stranger Things, the streaming giant has Peaky Blinders, God’s Favorite Idiot, Ozark, The Lincoln Lawyer, and Web of Make Believe: Death, Lies, and the Internet in the top ten. For the Acquired Series top ten streaming list, Netflix is doing even better, taking up a whopping seven spots with Criminal Minds, NCIS, Cocomelon, All American, Grey’s Anatomy, Heartland, and Supernatural. It’s worth noting that Nielsen only records minutes watched on TV sets, not mobile devices or computers. It also only measures US audiences and only includes Apple TV+, Disney+, HBO Max, Hulu, Netflix, and Prime Video on its streaming charts. Still, these numbers are a big win for Netflix.
With numbers like these, Netflix is probably disappointed that the Duffer Brothers are only planning on making one more season of Stranger Things. The series has always been a hit for the streamer, but the fourth season really seems to be permeating the public consciousness more than usual. The huge popularity of TikTok and Instagram Reels could have played a part in that, as the meme song “Chrissy, Wake Up,” an autotuned remix of some lines from the show, was everywhere following the release of the first batch of season four episodes. And that’s not even looking at the huge boost of popularity that Stranger Things brought to classic Kate Bush banger “Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God).” The 1985 song became Bush’s first song to reach the American Billboard Top 5 when it hit number four. Whether it’s music or TV streaming charts, Stranger Things always seems to be at the top of the pile. We’ll have to see if it can keep that streak going into the coming weeks.
