According to Netflix, the third season of Stranger Thingshas claimed the title as their most streamed program (in a span of four days) to ever air on their platform.
Citing some pretty eye-popping in-house numbers, they say that 40.7 million accounts have tuned in to watch after the season was uploaded on July 4th, and that nearly 45 percent of those accounts (18.2 million total) have already watched all eight episodes. However, they stopped short of providing info relating to viewership data for specific episodes, as is their M.O.:
Shortly after Netflix broke the news, Nielsen confirmed that a lot of people did indeed watch the new season of the show. They said that the show racked up an average minute audience of 12.8 million viewers for that four day period. The first episode pulled in a solid 19.17 million viewers, an increase from the previous season. Relatedly, 824,000 viewers binged the series on July 4. Only 361,000 did the same when season 2 was released, though it's probably important to note that July 4 is a holiday and a good amount of people didn't have to go into work.
To put it in perspective, all the way back in October 2017, when the series' second season premiered, Nielsen had said that they'd start counting the amount of TVs that tuned into Netflix programs. The first episode of that season averaged 15.8 million viewers in the U.S., with almost 11 million of those viewers being in the very coveted 18-34 demo. Of note is that those only counted viewers tuning in on TV sets.
On that exact same note, Netflix contends that Nielsen doesn't take into account people who stream on their phones, laptops, and whatever else you can watch on. Still, the definitive ratings measuring company summed up the season's ratings by saying that "a significant viewing event occurred," adding that season 2's nine episodes averaged four million viewers, about three million of which were in the 18-34 demo.
Guess that's good news if you're in the cast.
Check out Nielsen's four-day figures for Stranger Things 3, by episode, below.
"Chapter One: Suzie, Do You Copy?" — 19.17 million viewers
"Chapter Two: The Mall Rats" — 17.62 million
"Chapter Three: The Case of the Missing Lifeguard" — 15.93 million
"Chapter Four: The Sauna Test" — 13.93 million
"Chapter Five: The Flayed" — 12.01 million
"Chapter Six: E Pluribus Unum" — 10.78 million
"Chapter Seven: The Bite" — 7.36 million
"Chapter Eight: The Battle of Starcourt" — 8.71 million
