Stranger Things Season 5 Leaves Audience ‘Upside Down’, Netflix Crashes As Vol 1 Premieres

Stranger Things hype gets real as Netflix turned into the 'Upside Down.' The streaming platform crashed at 5 p.m. PT on Wednesday, right as the highly anticipated fifth season of the sci-fi phenomenon

premiered.

Netflix Faces Temporary Outage Amid Massive Traffic

The service went down for nearly three minutes and continued to show glitches for several users. Tens of thousands who logged in to watch the new season were greeted instead by an image from “Nailed It!” and the error message: “Something went wrong. Sorry, we’re having trouble with your request. You’ll find lots to explore on the home page.”By 5:05 p.m., the platform appeared to be functioning normally for most viewers.A Netflix spokesperson told Variety: “Some members briefly experienced an issue streaming on TV devices, but service recovered for all accounts within five minutes.”This isn’t the first time “Stranger Things” has overloaded Netflix. In July 2022, the service briefly crashed when the final two episodes of Season 4 were released. Netflix also faced outages during the Mike Tyson–Jake Paul fight, one of its early large-scale live-stream events.

What to Expect in the Final Season

Stranger Things returns with the first batch of episodes from its final season, coming more than three years after the Season 4 finale. The new episodes follow the Hawkins group as they attempt to locate and eliminate Vecna. Meanwhile, the town remains under military quarantine, and Eleven is in hiding from authorities.ALSO READ: Stranger Things: 7 Reasons Why Netflix Show Has Been Such Massive Success On OTT

Star-Studded Cast Returns

Created by Matt and Ross Duffer, “Stranger Things” features an ensemble cast including: Millie Bobby Brown, Finn Wolfhard, Gaten Matarazzo, Caleb McLaughlin, Noah Schnapp, Sadie Sink, Natalia Dyer, Charlie Heaton, Joe Keery, Maya Hawke, Winona Ryder, David Harbour, Cara Buono, Priah Ferguson, Eduardo Franco, Brett Gelman, Dacre Montgomery, Matthew Modine, Paul Reiser, Jamie Campbell Bower, Grace Van Dien, Robert Englund, Tyner Rushing, and Raphael Luce.