Stranger Things S5 Premiere Crashes Netflix (& The Service Remains Down for Many Fans)

The Stranger Things season 5 premiere is not off to the smooth, record-breaking start that Netflix wanted – as the debut took down the entire streaming service at launch. Hype for the season has been at an all-time high as the streamer touts the end of the fan-favorite franchise – leading to a blockbuster two-hour finale that viewers can even enjoy in a movie theater, if they choose.

As for the premiere block, while the service is back up for a lot of users, many are still reporting suboptimal performance and lower-than-normal resolutions. It’s unclear what Netflix has already done – and is continuing to do in order to mitigate the issues; however, users should expect an easing of problems as the bottleneck of users hitting the login and play gateways begins to ease.

Users have taken to Twitter and other social media services to express their frustration over Netflix’s lack of preparedness. At 8:00 p.m. ET, the service confidently tweeted out that Volume 1 of the new season was available to watch; unfortunately, that didn’t turn out to be the case for the majority of fans attempting to load the show – and the streamer’s tweet was bombarded with memes, complaints, and even non-fans poking fun at the meltdown.

Given that Netflix enjoyed over two weeks of Stranger Things rewatch traffic, there’s no question that many fans were prepped and ready to hit the ground running – and the downtime definitely killed a bit of that enthusiasm (albeit temporarily). That said, while frustrated fans will vent on Twitter and threaten to cancel subscriptions, generally an outage like this one doesn’t have an impact on subscriptions nor does it leave a permanent stain on the series itself. It’s a brief hiccup and the only thing that can truly ruin enthusiasm for Stranger Things (or Netflix as a whole) is if the Duffer Brothers don’t end their series with a satisfying conclusion (à la Game of Thrones, How I Met Your Mother, and Dexter).

Stranger Things S5 Crashing Netflix Isn’t Even a First for the Platform

After all, this isn’t the first time that Netflix has experienced technical issues that sent fans into a frenzy – as their WWE Raw debut was marred with streaming and connectivity issues and their Love Is Blind live reunion in season 4 caused a significant delay that saw the service abandon similar live events for the reality series altogether. In both cases, die-hard fans were the ones impacted the most – and the outcomes were worse. Since both shows were live events, each series’ most dedicated followers actually missed out on watching (in the case of Raw) or were delayed nearly 3 hours (until the Love Is Blind reunion was taped and then put on-demand).

At least this time, a majority of users were able to watch shortly after the initial crash and are experiencing only minor performance issues.

Read Next

Stranger Things Season 5’s Surprising Returning Character After 8 Years Away, Explained

In spite of frustration that technical issues cause users, it’s an understandable challenge that streamers face – especially when there’s an incentive for them to create buzzworthy content “events” such as their staggered and holiday-centric Stranger Things season 5 rollout. No doubt, with many fans already visiting family and friends ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday, it’s highly likely that a very high portion of U.S. households were tuned-in right at 8:00 p.m. to watch the season 5 return together.

So what can fans expect once they get in? Our own review of the Stranger Things season 5 premiere was positive (albeit while pointing out some lingering criticisms that have plagued the series in recent seasons). We’ll know soon how fans feel about the actual episodes; yet, with a paced rollout of new episodes spanning all the way into New Year’s Eve, Netflix has a couple more opportunities to prevent whatever went wrong tonight from happening again.

Looking for more Stranger Things season 5 coverage? Here are a few pillar articles to help you prepare (when Netflix starts working for you) or after you’ve seen the first episodes:

• Stranger Things Season 5 Timeline: How Much Time Has Passed Since Season 4
• How Old Stranger Things’ Actors Are Compared to Their Characters (& How Old They Were in Season 1)
• Stranger Things Season 5, Volume 1 Ending Solves Many Hawkins Mysteries

What did you think of the premiere? Leave a comment below and join the conversation now in the ComicBook Forum!

The post Stranger Things S5 Premiere Crashes Netflix (& The Service Remains Down for Many Fans) appeared first on ComicBook.com.