Netflix down in US? Over 14,000 users hit as Stranger Things Season 5 premieres; many affected in India too

OTT giant Netflix is experiencing an outage in the United States on Wednesday evening, November 26 (local time). The outage coincides with the premiere of its hit show Stranger Things Season 5 Vol 1.

The first instalment of episodes of the highly anticipated final season of Stranger Things was released at 8 PM EST (6:30 AM IST +1).

There were more than 14,290 reports of issues with the streaming platform, as of 7:56 PM ET, according to Downdetector, which tracks outages by collating status reports from a number of sources.

Several Indian users have also reported issues with loading and accessing content on Netflix on Thursday at 6:30 AM IST.

There were fewer than 800 reports of the outage by 8:45 p.m. ET.

‘Services recovered’

“Some members briefly experienced an issue streaming on TV devices, but service recovered for all accounts within five minutes,” Netflix said in an emailed response to Reuters.

The platform has previously faced outages during major events, including the Mike Tyson-Jake Paul boxing bout and the live-streamed reality show “Love is Blind”.

Stranger Things Season 5: Release date – US

Netflix has ranked "Stranger Things" as its third-most popular English-language series globally.

The first four episodes of Stranger Things 5 were released on November 26, followed by three episodes on Christmas, and the finale episode on New Year’s Eve.

Each episode of Stranger Things 5, Volume 1, comprising four episodes in total, is expected to have a runtime of 54 minutes to 1 hour and 23 minutes.

Episode 1: The Crawl

Episode 2: The Vanishing of …

Episode 3: The Turnbow Trap

Episode 4: Sorcerer

About Stranger Things Season 5

Netflix synopsis for Stranger Things Season 5 says, “The fall of 1987. Hawkins is scarred by the opening of the Rifts, and our heroes are united by a single goal: find and kill Vecna. But he has vanished — his whereabouts and plans unknown. Complicating their mission, the government has placed the town under military quarantine and intensified its hunt for Eleven, forcing her back into hiding. As the anniversary of Will’s disappearance approaches, so does a heavy, familiar dread. The final battle is looming — and with it, a darkness more powerful and more deadly than anything they’ve faced before. To end this nightmare, they’ll need everyone — the full party — standing together, one last time.”

(With agency inputs)