After a truly painful wait, Stranger Things finally returns to Netflix today. The ridiculously popular show has snowballed in popularity, triumphed over Obi-Wan Kenobi in the streaming charts, and generated a ridiculous amount of hype online.
All new Netflix shows are released onto the service at midnight in Los Angeles, so audiences around the world set their alarm clocks, grabbed some popcorn, and tuned in to find…
Uh-oh. You’d think Netflix of all companies would have the user data and infrastructure to anticipate how many people around the world would be trying to watch the new episodes, but the service is currently undergoing some severe stress, and many can’t get their Stranger Things fix.
As you can imagine, the internet is not happy:
Older users point out that they never had to worry about Blockbuster crashing when they rented a movie:
Others are finding some schadenfreude in all the Stranger Things blue balls going on right now:
Some think Netflix might take this as a positive sign of the show’s popularity:
In all seriousness, this is embarrassing for Netflix. The company has built its reputation on its stable streaming platform, so user demand knocking it out indicates that they’ve cut corners on server capacity. The viewing figures for the first volume of season four should have shown them the massive influx of traffic they were about to receive, so it’s likely someone in the tech department simply crossed their fingers and prayed that the servers could take the load.
We’re sure this outage will only be a temporary blip, but at least it bodes very well for Stranger Things‘ continued dominance on streaming TV.
Stranger Things season four volume 2 is out now on Netflix. Maybe.
