There’s no method to the madness of predicting which Netflix series can prove itself capable of breaking out from the pack and becoming a worldwide juggernaut, because there’s surely no way anybody could have guessed that the unassuming Outer Banks would end up as one of the streaming service’s hottest original shows.
Initially premiering in April of 2020, the hybrid of teen drama and treasure-hunting mystery saw a bunch of telegenic young stars hanging out in a sun-kissed locale to deal with the trials, tribulations, and complicated interpersonal dynamics of teenage life, which somehow snowballed into the relatively low-key production becoming a global phenomenon.
From there, the viewership figures and popularity of Outer Banks have only continued to increase, with the recently-debuted third season once more underlining its credentials as one of the jewels in Netflix’s episodic crown. Per FlixPatrol, not only has the latest chapter immediately crash-landed into the Top 10 in 89 countries, but it’s the number one top-viewed TV show in 53 of them.
A rapid-fire season four renewal has already been handed out, and while the story continues to grow even more absurd and preposterous as the creative team tries to wrangle the unwieldy and increasingly nonsensical beast they created, audiences simply can’t get enough.
Outer Banks was always going to thrive given that it’s not a fantasy project – which continue to be the bane of the company’s existence – but the audience data has shown that it might just be Netflix’s biggest in-house exclusive that isn’t set in any sort of heightened reality at all.
