It’s official: The Squid Game is still the biggest Netflix series in history.
Even the internet popularity of Stranger Things Season 4 – which became Netflix’s most popular English-language show of all time and the first to amass more than a billion hours of viewing in its first month of release – may have taken its toll. Hwang Dong-hyuk’s dystopian survival drama, whose reign as the top series now seems certain for years to come.
Confirmation of the Squid game’s continued power comes after Stranger Things’ 28-day release window — i.e. the period in which Netflix records and publishes viewership numbers — expired on July 29. All told, the show’s 4th season The Duffer brothers’ sci-fi favorites are collected. 1.4 billion watch hours, about 250 million shy of Squid Game’s record-setting 1.65 billion.
Naturally, 1.4 billion hours of viewing – the equivalent of 160,000 years – remains a mind-blowing series spanning six years. But Alien’s failure to ‘overshadow Squid Game’s record’ serves to further demonstrate the extent of the latter’s success.
For starters, Stranger Things got two bites of the cherry with its fourth season. Split into two episodes – episodes 1-7 and 8-9 – the show enjoyed a rare 56-day window to gather total viewership, compared to the Squid Game’s usual 28-day window. In fact, volume 1 did not contribute to the series after June 24, but volume 2 took the baton on July 1 and continued until July 29.
What’s more, the long release window of Stranger Things has also been loaded for much longer than Game Squid. The latter nine episodes were around eight hours long, while the first nine episodes totaled a whopping 13 hours (with two full-length observations).
Basically, then, your viewing of Totally Stranger Things season 4 would contribute more to your total viewership than completing the equivalent binge of Game Squid. Unfair, right?
However, The Squid Game is still the biggest Netflix show of all time – which begs the question: will something cancel the event in South Korea?
A familiar foe
For our money, the only threat to Squid Game’s dominance on Netflix in the near future is… Game Squid. Read also : Netflix will miss key shows at an embarrassing time. Or more specifically, Season 2 of Squid Games.
“But what about Stranger Things season 5?” we hear you cry. Yes, the series’ fifth and final episode is very likely to follow the path of its predecessor by entering the billionaire club on Netflix – but the high-powered record of Squid Game may still stand.
Think how popular Stranger Things season 4 has become. The show had the internet — and the international music charts — under control for months on end. The likes of Vecna, Steve and Max have been the topic of water cooler conversations around the world. Heck, Stranger Things made the return of the galaxy’s most famous Jedi look like a reboot of Friends.
And it still hasn’t broken Hwang Dong-hyuk’s survival streak. It’s also important to note that Stranger Things Season 4 was not universally praised by viewers like the show’s previous entries. Some fans were outraged by the extremely long running time of this season and the Duffer brothers’ refusal to kill off major characters, suggesting that there may be a slight drop in viewership for season 5.
So, despite Stranger Things’ popularity, we don’t think its fifth and final season – or any other Netflix movie or TV series, for that matter – will come close to the success of Squid Game. If that 1.65 billion-hour record is ever broken, the honor will belong to Squid Game 2.
Incidentally, there is no release date for the return of Squid Game yet, but the creator of the show, Hwang Dong-hyuk, has teased a 2024 release after the completion of a new film he is currently working on. Stay tuned to our Squid Game 2 hub for the latest news on the highly anticipated arrival.
Axel is a London-based staff writer at TechRadar, reporting on everything from the latest Tesla models to new movies as part of the site’s daily news feed. Having previously written for publications including Esquire and FourFourTwo, Axel is well versed in the applications of technology beyond the desktop, and his degree in English literature means he can sometimes be seen slipping Hemingway quotes into stories about sports cars. of electricity.
Axel is a London-based staff writer at TechRadar, reporting on everything from the latest Tesla models to new movies as part of the site’s daily news feed. Having previously written for publications such as Esquire and FourFourTwo, Axel is well versed in the applications of technology beyond the desktop, and his degree in English literature means he can sometimes be seen slipping Hemingway quotes into stories about sports cars. of electricity.
