Stranger Things' Popularity Appears to Crash Netflix Servers

Stranger Things appears to have destroyed Netflix's servers.

Netflix suffered a mass outage last night around 3 am ET, shortly after Stranger Things 4 Volume 2 went live.

The global uptime-monitoring site Downdetector.com reported that Netflix was back to running properly only 30 minutes after the crash. But that was not quick enough for Stranger Things loyalists. The report says Netflix received over 13,000 complaints about errors during that half-hour window.

In addition, hundreds of thousands of angry users tweeted about the outage -- hence "NETFLIX CRASHED" trending this morning on Twitter.

Fans were so anxious to return to the Upside Down that they stayed up until, or woke up at, 3 am and streamed the new episodes at such a high volume that the servers crashed.

For you less tech-savvy individuals, even the most sophisticated servers can go down with too much usage at once.

That's how popular the show is. 

Stranger Things is now the highest-viewed English-language series on Netflix to date. The first half of the fourth season -- which premiered on May 27 -- smashed several opening weekend records

The first volume with seven episodes drew 287 million hours viewed in just three days, a Netflix record. In addition, full-week viewership amounted to 335 million hours watched from May 30 to June 5.

So while Netflix celebrates the success of Stranger Things 4, it needs to quickly get back into the lab -- like Papa -- to find a long-term succession plan. The series will end after the fifth season, which does not yet have a release date. 

With mass subscriber losses and a turn to an ad-supported tier, Netflix can ill-afford to lose users who subscribe only for a visit to Hawkins.

Ultimately, look for Netflix to stretch out the Stranger Things universe with a pack of prequels following the fifth and final season.

In the meantime, here's my official prediction for the second half of the fourth season:

Steve Harrington dies.

Enjoy July 4 with fireworks, hot dogs, the Demogorgon, and kids with psychokinetic abilities.