Final Season Stranger Things Premiere Broke Netflix

Credit: Netflix

Yesterday, the Netflix streaming platform was unavailable for about an hour to some residents of the United States. The incident coincided with the premiere of the fifth and final season of Stranger Things.

Around 5:00 PM Pacific Time, Netflix was unavailable for tens of thousands of users; the outage lasted for about three minutes. Viewers who tuned in to the fifth season of Stranger Things were instead greeted by an image from the project “One to One!” with the caption: “Something went wrong. Sorry, we’re having trouble with your request. You’ll find lots of great stuff on the homepage.” Streaming was quickly restored, but some subscribers continued to experience minor outages for several hours.

Netflix has previously struggled to cope with sudden surges in users. In July 2022, streaming briefly crashed after the release of the final two episodes of Stranger Things season four. In November 2024, viewers also experienced Netflix outages during a live broadcast of the Mike Tyson vs. Jake Paul boxing match.

The platform has previously experienced outages during major events, including the Mike Tyson vs. Jake Paul boxing match and the live broadcast of the reality show “Love is Blind.”