‘Stranger Things’ Season 4 Has More Than 1.4 Billion Views—Which Is Still Not Enough to Beat 'Squid Game'

Stranger Things season 4 was a monumental success for Netflix, generating Emmy nominations, tons of praise, viral social media interaction, and more than 1.4 billion hours viewed. But despite all that, it wasn’t quite enough for the beloved series to dethrone Squid Game.

According to a new report from Variety, the second volume of Stranger Things season 4 didn’t break the South Korean survival drama series’ record.

Netflix looked at the number of hours viewed in Stranger Things’s first 28 days of streaming. Because season 4 was split into two volumes, “volume 1’s viewership in the 28 days after its debut was combined with volume 2’s viewership after 28 days—meaning that viewership of volume 1 during volume 2’s eligible window did not contribute toward the final count,” Variety writes.

Stranger Things’s fourth season, totaling nine hour-plus episodes, ended its run with 1.4 billion hours viewed compared to Squid Game‘s 1.7 billion. What’s even more impressive is that Squid Game had nine episodes running slightly less than an hour apiece, equating to about eight hours of content, whereas Stranger Things season 4 totaled approximately 13 hours due to its supersized episodes.

Even with Stranger Things having almost five extra hours of content, it wasn’t enough to push it into the top position as the most-watched Netflix season of all time.

Stranger Things season 5 is expected to premiere in the summer of 2024. Considering the fifth season is going to be the show’s final one, it will be interesting to see if it can break that record next time around. But Squid Game season 2 is coming, too—though its debut has not been scheduled.