Despite there being a number of eyebrows raised when it was revealed how much Netflix spent on each episode of Stranger Things, the show’s phenomenal performance has proved it was worth every penny for the streamer. Since the second part of season 4 arrived on Netflix, the show had continued to break viewing records, and it hasn’t stopped yet after pulling in the second-highest week in streaming history, which has seen the series become an almost completely dominance force in the streaming charts.

Stranger Things is Netflix’s jewel in the crown when it comes to its huge fan base, and the arrival of the latest season after a long delay has proven that those fans just cannot get enough of the 80s-set horror franchise. Although the show has always been popular, season 4 has taken it to a whole new level, which can only bode well for the fifth and final season when it makes its debut.

The premiere of the final two episodes of the season saw Stranger Things pass 1 billion hours watched as fans flocked to binge through the almost four-hour run time of the second part of the season. As reported by Variety, the debut of season 4 in the week between May 30 and June 5 pulled in a staggering 7.2 billion minutes of watched time, the highest ever on a streaming platform. Between June 27 and July 1, the series managed an equally impressive 5.9 billion watched minutes thanks to the arrival of Part Two on the final day of that run. This means that as well as claiming the second highest streaming week ever, Stranger Things now holds four of the top six spots in the Nielson chart for weekly streaming volumes.

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Stranger Things 4 Broke Many Records and Expectation on The Final Season Is Huge

Stranger Things 4 Lucas, Eleven, Mike, Will, and Max
Netflix

The Duffer Brothers have previously commented that they have had a plan for Season 5 for some time, but they are only now getting to writing the scripts for the final season. Based on their own predictions, this means that the new season will not start filming until next year, and that in turn means we will not see the new episodes until sometime in 2024. While this is not as long a wait as that between seasons 3 and 4, it will be long enough for those desperately wanting to know how the show ends.

As the Duffer Brothers revealed, season 4 did not pan out exactly as they originally planned, and it was never meant to be as long as it turned out, so while the pair have said that season 5 will be shorter, there is no guarantee that will be the case once the scripting is complete. With fans already producing some wild theories about how the series could end, who could die and which characters could end up appearing in a spin-off in the future.

The first four seasons of Stranger Things are now streaming in their entirety on Netflix.