Netflix crashed within minutes of releasing Stranger Things season five, leaving viewers unable to stream the opening episodes of the long-awaited final series.
The outage began almost immediately after the episodes dropped, according to the outage tracker Downdetector, which recorded more than 14,000 reports in the US.
In India too, fans reported the app freezing and displaying connection errors. At the peak of the outage, Downdetector showed almost 200 reports made in the country.
Read The Independent’s review of the new season.
“Some members briefly experienced an issue streaming on TV devices, but service recovered for all accounts within five minutes,” Netflix said in an emailed response, according to Reuters.
Netflix previously crashed while hosting major events such as the Mike Tyson-Jake Paul boxing bout and a live reunion for the reality dating show Love is Blind in 2024. This wasn’t even the first disruption involving Stranger Things as Netflix saw a brief outage when the final two episodes of the fourth season were released in 2022.
It seemed the streamer was hoping to avoid a similar experience, as Ross Duffer, the series co-creator, said on his Instagram that Netflix had “increased bandwidth by 30 per cent to avoid a crash”.
Many fans took to X to express their frustration over not being able to play the first episode.
“They fixed the bandwidth and Netflix still crashed,” one user complained. Another wrote: “Netflix crashing literally one minute before 8pm you got to be kidding me.”
so did everyone’s netflix crash or??? pic.twitter.com/tbnYdKMowU
— ace ❤️🔥 (@kaceydillax) November 27, 2025
NETFLIX HAS CRASHED I REPEAT NETFLIX HAS CRASHED pic.twitter.com/arlKSCoYpJ
— WesNemo (@WesNemo) November 27, 2025
Did stranger things just crash Netflix? pic.twitter.com/Ply7fBOBdA
— Liam (@Meicrodon_) November 27, 2025
A day before the highly anticipated final season of the science fiction horror series was set to drop, all previous seasons made it to Netflix’s top 10 shows charts, a first for any show on the streaming platform.
Season 5, which co-creators Matt and Ross Duffer previously said features “the most violent death of any season”, dropped its first four episodes on 26 November.
Stranger Things follows the residents of a fictional Indiana small town called Hawkins after a young girl with psychokinetic abilities opens a gateway between the earth and an alternate dimension known as the Upside Down.
Millie Bobby Brown, Finn Wolfhard, Noah Schnapp, Caleb McLaughlin, and Gaten Matarazzo have led the series since its debut almost a decade ago – back when they were all young teenagers – alongside Joe Keery, Natalia Dyer, Winona Ryder, and David Harbour.
Sadie Sink joined in the second season and has remained a fan favourite. Describing the emotional experience of filming her final scenes, the actor likened it to “saying goodbye to your childhood”.
The new season features a time jump to make up for the pace at which the show’s stars are out-aging the characters they play.
Volume One of Stranger Things season five debuted 26 November, Volume Two was slated to drop on Christmas Day and the series finale on New Year’s Eve.
The finale will be released in over 350 theatres beginning December 31. The exact theatres offering the viewing will be announced at a later date. This will be the first time an episode of a Netflix series will be available to watch on the big screen.
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