Netflix struggled to handle demand for the hotly anticipated fifth and final season of Stranger Things, and crashed within minutes of new episodes dropping. Fans who had waited three years for the first part of the new season were unable to stream the opening four episodes on Wednesday. Outage tracker Downdetector recorded more than 14,000 reports in the U.S. alone, The Guardian reported. The outage was thankfully short-lived for fans of the hit show. A spokesperson for Netflix told Reuters: “Some members briefly experienced an issue streaming on TV devices, but service recovered for all accounts within five minutes.” Ross Duffer, who created the show with his brother, Matt, boasted on his Instagram that Netflix had “increased bandwidth by 30 percent to avoid a crash”. This is not the first time that a surge in streaming has wiped out Netflix. There was also a brief outage when the final two episodes of Stranger Things’ fourth season became available to watch in 2022. The next three episodes of Stranger Things will—hopefully—be available to stream on Christmas Day, with the final ever episode dropping on New Year’s Day.
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