The 9th installment in cinema’s stealthiest multiverse takes advantage of Netflix’s enthusiasm to crack the Top 10 in 90 countries

Everybody knows Robert Rodriguez is a man who always wears a hat literally, and wears even more figuratively by regularly taking on upwards of a dozen behind the scenes roles on his productions. What largely went unnoticed, though, is that he confirmed his own multiverse over a decade ago, which technically makes Spy Kids: Armageddon its ninth installment.

As well as being the fifth Spy Kids movie and second soft reboot in little over a decade, the filmmaker confirmed that The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl and Danny Trejo’s Machete franchise both occupy the same grand tapestry as his kid-friendly adventures, with We Can Be Heroes getting added into the mix when it connected itself to the former pair of diminutive superheroes.

Netflix’s call to reinvigorate Spy Kids looked to be onto a winner when its latest chapter debuted to a Rotten Tomatoes score of 70 percent, but those numbers have since plummeted way down to 47 over the course of the weekend, even if the increasingly lukewarm reactions haven’t prevented it from making a splash on the viewership rankings.

Per FlixPatrol, Armageddon may have become the latest pretender to the throne that’s failed to dislodge Love at First Sight from the summit, but it nonetheless cascaded onto the Top 10 in 90 countries after premiering, even if nine number one debuts is on the low end for an effects-heavy and action-packed Netflix original that even comes with an inbuilt 22 years of name recognition.

Having compared it to James Bond in an ominous intonation of things potentially to come, whether it’s Spy Kids 6 or We Can Be Heroes 2, the chances of the RodriguezVerse making it to double digits is higher than ever.