Stranger Things Season 3 Has Scared Up 40 Million Viewers, Netflix Claims

By Dave Nemetz
Stranger Things 3 Courtesy of Netflix

Forget fireworks: Plenty of people were firing up their Netflix account to watch Stranger Things over the July 4th weekend, apparently.

The streaming giant claims that a whopping 40.7 million accounts "have been watching" Season 3 of the retro sci-fi hit since it debuted last Thursday, according to a tweet sent out on Monday:

Now of course, we've learned to take any and all Netflix ratings information with a huge grain of salt — the streamer doesn't release regular viewership data, and their internal numbers can't be independently verified — and a source at the streamer confirms that they define "watching" a series as completing 70 percent of a single episode. But 40 million viewers is still a huge number in today's TV landscape, by any measure, and outranks "any other film or series in its first four days," Netflix says.

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Plus, it's impressive, as the tweet also notes, that 18.2 million viewers have already watched all eight episodes of Stranger Things Season 3 in just four-plus days. (Most TV shows these days would kill for 18 million viewers, let alone viewers so devoted that they'll consume eight hours of TV in less than a week.)

We didn't really need to wait for the ratings to come in, though: Season 4 of Stranger Things is "definitely happening," per executive producer Shawn Levy — though we kind of think it should be the last season, actually. And series creators Matt and Ross Duffer agree: They've said they've always envisioned the series as "a four-season thing and then out."

Have you already binged all of Stranger Things Season 3? Grade it in our poll, and hit the comments below to share your thoughts.

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