A headline doing the rounds this week crowned Wednesday, Netflix’s 16-episode gothic mystery starring Jenna Ortega, as “the biggest streaming hit in history.” Netflix’s own all-time charts tell a more complicated story: the show is a record-holder, but not the record-holder.
The first season of Wednesday sits at No. 1 on Netflix’s all-time list of English-language shows with 252.1 million views. Yet on the streamer’s separate list of non-English shows, Squid Game Season 1 shows 265.2 million. Both lists use the same yardstick, total views in the first 91 days of release.
What Netflix’s numbers actually show
Netflix publishes four all-time charts: English shows, non-English shows, English films and non-English films. Sort five of the heaviest hitters by hours watched instead of views, and Wednesday drops to third:
- Squid Game Season 1 (2021): about 2.21 billion hours; 265.2 million views.
- Stranger Things 4 (2022): about 1.84 billion hours; 140.7 million views.
- Wednesday Season 1 (2022): about 1.72 billion hours; 252.1 million views.
- Squid Game Season 2 (2024): about 1.38 billion hours; 192.6 million views.
- Adolescence (2025): about 0.55 billion hours; 142.6 million views.
Run the math and the gap is clear. Squid Game Season 1 is ahead by 13.1 million views, or about 5%. On hours, the Korean thriller leads by roughly 486 million, and even Stranger Things 4 logged about 119 million more hours than Wednesday Season 1, because its episodes run longer.
Where Wednesday is untouchable is the English-language chart. Its first season beat the runner-up, Adolescence, by 109.5 million views, close to 77% more. And no English-language series season has come within 100 million views of it.
So the fair version of the claim: Wednesday Season 1 is the most-viewed English-language show season Netflix has ever measured, and the second-most-viewed show season of any language on the service. “Biggest in history” across all of streaming is a bigger claim than Netflix’s charts can back, since they only measure Netflix titles.
Why the 16-episode label matters
The show has just two seasons so far, eight episodes each. Season 1 dropped on November 23, 2022. Season 2 arrived in two halves, on August 6 and September 3, 2025, and has 119.3 million views, enough for No. 6 on the English list. Add the two together and Wednesday has 371.4 million views across both seasons’ first 91 days, a combined figure Netflix does not itself rank.
Created by Alfred Gough and Miles Millar, with Tim Burton directing four episodes per season, the series reimagines the Addams Family’s deadpan daughter as a teenage psychic solving murders at Nevermore Academy, a boarding school for outcasts. Season 1 was shot in Romania, with Cantacuzino Castle in Bușteni standing in for the school.
Season 3: cameras down, date still secret
Netflix renewed the show for a third season in July 2025. Filming started on February 23, 2026, moved through Ireland and Paris, and wrapped on September 30.
The new run adds Eva Green as Morticia’s sister, Ophelia Frump, while Winona Ryder, Chris Sarandon and Noah Taylor join the cast, with Lena Headey and Andrew McCarthy as guest stars. Ortega, Emma Myers, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Luis Guzmán return. Green was hurt during filming in Dublin in late June and taken to hospital, recovering later that week.
Netflix has not announced a premiere date. For scale, Season 2 arrived about 32 months after Season 1. Whenever Season 3 lands, its target is already on the board: the 252.1 million views its own first season set.
Further reading
Image: Colleen Sturtevant, CC BY 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed by our Editorial Desk. How we work.
