Stranger Things Dethroned on Netflix as Wednesday and Squid Game Take Over #1 Spots
As Netflix changes its show popularity metrics, Stranger Things loses its crown as Wednesday and Squid Game finally rise to the top of their respective ratings.
Wednesday finally became the top of the food chain when it comes to Netflix ’s most popular shows but there’s a twist: this is due to the platform’s new algorithms, and only among the English-language shows.
With the recent implementation of new primary metrics on Netflix, the popularity of shows is now defined by total views instead of the hours viewed as it used to be. This is a way more just system since prior to the changes, it was virtually impossible for any other show to dethrone Stranger Things S4 which has 13 episodes in it.
The new Netflix chart sees Wednesday rise to power: the first season of the series has over 250M views. Stranger Things S4 managed to stay in second place despite lagging pretty far behind with a bit more than 140M views. Dahmer, Bridgerton S1, and The Queen's Gambit take the rest of the top-5 with 115M, 113M, and 112M total views respectively.
But here comes the twist: if we step away from English-first shows, even Wednesday loses her crown and hands it over to the overwhelmingly popular Squid Game!
While Wednesday has a whopping 252M total views with 1.7B hours streamed, the South Korean cultural phenomenon beats it in both the old and the new metrics. Squid Game has over 265M views and was streamed for more than 2.2B hours in total while having just a bit more runtime than the Addams Family spin-off.
Curiously enough, the rest of the top-5 in the non-English rating is almost exclusively dominated by the Spanish series Money Heist ( La Casa De Papel). Seasons 4, 5, and 3 of this show have three spots booked in the chart with the exception of the third spot that belongs to Lupin S1.
Apart from Squid Game, however, no other non-English show has quite reached the viewership numbers shown by the English-first chart’s top-5 series.
The actual worldwide top-3 Netflix list sees Squid Game take the crown, Wednesday following closely behind, and Stranger Things S4 booking the bronze.
Source: Netflix
[https://www.netflix.com/tudum/top10/most-popular/tv]