Stranger Things fans have stormed the gates of Netflix again. Season 5 Volume 1 hit the platform at 5 p.m. PT on Wednesday… and the servers tapped out like they’d been thrown into the Upside Down. People waited three years for this moment. The servers apparently needed a little more prep time.
When the episodes dropped, the internet turned into a support group. Fans rushed to X, shouting in all caps and breaking the caps lock while they were at it. One user had zero chill: “NETFLIX FIX YOURSELF RIGHT NOW BRO, IVE BEEN WAITING THREE YEARS.” Another begged, “OH MY GOD NETFLIX PLS FIX YOURSELF I WANNA WATCH.” Over on Instagram, the comments under the Stranger Things promo post looked like a mob demanding justice and maybe a fresh router.
Meanwhile, the official Netflix account tried calming the chaos with a retweet: “STRANGER THINGS IS BACK EVERYONE ST*U.”
Co-creator Ross Duffer teased earlier in the day that “Netflix increased bandwidth by 30 percent to avoid a crash.” Good effort… just not enough to hold back millions of impatient Hawkins stans smashing play across several continents at the exact same second. Streaming engineers claim Netflix can take tens of millions of simultaneous viewers before things start wobbling. The trick is timing. Too many people watching at once in one region and boom — goodbye loading screen.
For five excruciating minutes, people in the U.S., U.K., Australia, Brazil and Southeast Asia were forced to stare at frozen thumbnails. Then Netflix bounced back and told The Hollywood Reporter, “Some members briefly experienced an issue streaming on TV devices, but service recovered for all accounts within five minutes.”
The story picks up in the fall of 1987. Hawkins is under military quarantine, Vecna’s still causing problems, and the gang has one goal: end his creepy reign once and for all. Eleven, played by Millie Bobby Brown, has never been under more pressure. Also returning: Winona Ryder, David Harbour, Finn Wolfhard, Gaten Matarazzo, Caleb McLaughlin, Noah Schnapp, Sadie Sink and the rest of the monster-fighting crew.
And if you’re tracking the numbers like Vecna tracking Hawkins victims, Rotten Tomatoes currently has the seasons sitting at:
Season 1: 97%
Season 2: 94%
Season 3: 89%
Season 4: 89%
Season 5: 85%
Not a crash-and-burn situation, but not topping the original either. Then again, we’ve still got Volume 2 arriving December 25 and the grand finale dropping December 31 in theaters too.
For now, fans can breathe. Netflix is alive again. Stranger Things is alive again.
RELATED: First Look: Netflix’s Animated Stranger Things: Tales From ’85 Brings Hawkins To Life
