Stranger Things Returned to Streaming Charts Before Season 4 Debut

The fourth season of Stranger Things has been a behemoth for Netflix over the last few weeks, breaking records and becoming one of the most-watched single seasons in the streamer's history. However, the current run of success for Stranger Things actually began before the fourth season was even released. Ahead of the new installment, fans were going back to catch up on the previous seasons, and that was enough to make Stranger Things one of the biggest shows in all of streaming in the week leading up to Season 4.

On Thursday, Nielsen shared the streaming data from the week of May 16th to May 22nd, and Stranger Things was one of the 10 most-watched original streaming programs during that time. It ranked seventh that week, totaling up 378 million streaming minutes.

The success of Stranger Things has been constant since then, and will likely continue through the month of July. The final two episodes of the season are being released on July 1st, bringing Stranger Things 4 to a close and setting up for the show's final season. Despite the massive popularity, Netflix is standing firm that the fifth season of Stranger Things won't be released weekly

"For the fans of Stranger Things, this is how they've been watching that show, and I think to change that on them would be disappointing," Peter Friedlander, Netflix's head of scripted series for U.S. and Canada, told Variety earlier this month. "To not give them exactly what they've been expecting – which is Stranger Things is a seasonal experience, they go through that with them – I think that it would be an abrupt change for the member."

Friedlander went on to say that Netflix's binge model allows subscribers to decide how they want to watch a show. They can binge it all at once or watch the episodes on their own time.

"We fundamentally believe that we want to give our members the choice in how they view," he said. "And so giving them that option on these scripted series to watch as much as they want to watch when they watch it, is still fundamental to what we want to provide. And so when you see something like a batched season with Stranger Things, this is our attempt at making sure we can get shows out quicker to the members."

Have you been enjoying the fourth season of Stranger Things? Let us know in the comments!