The new season of Stranger Things was among the leaders in the number of viewing hours. It became the second Netflix series to cross the 1.15 billion mark after its May 27 premiere. Nine episodes received 301 million hours of views just last weekend. This is reported by The Verge.

The first series with a billion hours of viewing was Squid Game, which was released last year. Its record has yet to be broken, but Stranger Things can still do it. Last year’s hit received 1.65 billion views.

Last weekend, Stranger Things stayed in the top 10 of Netflix in 93 countries around the world. They became so popular that viewership for previous seasons also increased. All four seasons are now in the top six of the weekend’s most-watched series. Only Umbrella Academy is not far behind.

Netflix has a confusing system for measuring the popularity of shows. It tracks how many TV shows were watched within 28 days of release. These numbers are heavily influenced by how the episodes were released, their length, and other factors. It can be said that the success of Stranger Things emphasizes the sensation of Squid Game. Stranger Things is hours longer and had an extensive advertising campaign that lasted for months.

Although Squid Game still beats Stranger Things in the number of hours watched, the novelty may still win. Netflix won’t count viewings of the first episodes, but the new episodes as long as feature films can still collect the required hours.

There is no doubt that the finale of the popular Netflix story will be something stunning. It’s exactly the kind of long-running franchise the company has been desperately building in recent years, so Stranger Things 5 should be impressive.