Stranger Things’ Final Episode Crashed Netflix’s US Servers

Stranger Things may have fallen off (debatable) but enough people hit play to tank Netflix for a bit there.

We can file this one under “Should Have Seen That Coming”. Like Vecna before the pure power of friendship (presumably – I’ll check out the final episode this evening), Netflix‘s US servers appear to have folded under the weight of the sheer number of viewers who smashed the play button the second the final episode of Stranger Things dropped at 5pm, US Pacific Time.

Both Variety and Deadline are reporting that viewers keen to seen how things all wrap up in beloved Hawkins, Indiana, where it’s always 1980-something and the toys are way better than I remember, were met with an error message: Something went wrong. Sorry, we’re having trouble with your request. You’ll find lots to explore on the home page.

And quick scan of social media confirms it – fans are not happy.

And it looks like some viewers in Europe are having similar issues, with accounts in the UK and the continent chiming in.

And while Variety is reporting that “the crash lasted roughly a minute and was fixed after a few refreshes” issues seem to be ongoing, with some viewers reporting longer downtimes. Like this guy:

But the thing is, this already happened this season. When the first four episodes of Stranger Things Season Five landed on November 26, service was interrupted for a full five minutes, despite Netflix allocating 30% more bandwidth to handle the influx. The final episodes of Season Four had a similar effect back in 2022. So, you’d think they’d be able to crunch the numbers re: expected demand. On the other hand “so popular it crashed our servers” is not bad marketing copy.

Despite what you may think of the final season of Stranger Things (and for me, it’s no more but no less than what I expected), you can’t argue that a whole lotta folks are deeply invested in the Duffer brothers’ retro teen horror malarkey. Bet they’ll be happy when they finally get to see it.