Netflix crashes as Stranger Things Season 5 premieres, US and India users face issues
Just minutes after its long-awaited fifth season dropped, viewers took to social media with complaints of frozen apps, glitches, and sudden crashes
Global outage hits as new season releases
Netflix faced a large-scale outage in the US on Wednesday night, unfortunately coinciding with the release of Season 5 of Stranger Things. Thousands of subscribers said the service stopped working for them as it showed continuous loading icons or refused to stream episodes altogether. Many Indian users also reported similar issues, meaning the outage was not limited to one region.
According to data from Downdetector, there was a sudden spike of more than 8,000 outage reports in the US alone during the peak of the crash. Of these, over half pointed toward failures with streaming, while a sizeable chunk of users complained of an inability to connect with Netflix servers. The sudden volume of traffic caused one of the biggest spikes the platform has witnessed in a while.
Social media quickly filled with posts from disappointed fans who stayed up late for the premiere. Many posted screenshots of blank screens, frozen frames, and apps stuck on loading. One joked about staying awake until 1 am, only to have Netflix go down immediately, while another vented frustration over waiting all day for the new season only to hit errors.
This isn’t the first time a Stranger Things release has overwhelmed the service. A similar crash took place in July 2022, when Netflix struggled to handle the heavy traffic generated by the Season 4 finale.
