Stranger Things ended its five-season odyssey on Netflix on top — of not just the weekly streaming charts, but also Nielsen’s all-time weekly numbers.
The series had 8.65 billion minutes of viewing for the week of Dec. 29-Jan. 4; the series finale debuted on Dec. 31. That’s the largest single-week total since Nielsen began tracking streaming viewing in 2020, beating the previous mark of 8.46 billion minutes — also held by Stranger Things during the week of its final season premiere in late November. The series now has the four best weekly totals ever in Nielsen’s charts, including 7.2 billion minutes a week after season four premiered in 2022 and 6.89 billion minutes in the final full week of December 2025.
The tail end of the holiday season was good to a number of shows, as four series in addition to Stranger Things had more than a billion minutes of viewing. Landman declined for the first time during its second season — but only by a slight 4 percent to 1.58 billion minutes for Paramount+. The series has seven straight weeks over the 1 billion mark. Library shows The Closer (1.43 billion minutes), Homeland (1.08 billion) and Bluey (1.06 billion) also had big weeks.
Prime Video’s Fallout (962 million viewing minutes) posted its second straight week of growth as it continued rolling out its second season. Run Away, based on a Harlan Coben novel, was the top debut of the week with 862 million minutes of watch time, but it ranks behind past Coben adaptations Missing You, Fool Me Once and Stay Close, all of which debuted on Dec. 31 or Jan. 1 in past years.
Percy Jackson and the Olympians (574 million minutes) also had its best showing of season two so far for Disney+, and The Pitt (495 million minutes) re-entered the original series rankings a week before its second season premiere on HBO Max. Peacock’s thriller The Copenhagen Test, starring Simu Liu, also made the originals charts with 373 million minutes of viewing in its first full week.
The Christmas movies that had dominated the top 10 films chart in recent weeks disappeared as the calendar turned to 2026. Netflix’s documentary Evil Influencer: The Jodi Hildebrandt Story led the movie rankings with 620 million viewing minutes.
Nielsen’s streaming ratings cover viewing on TV sets only and don’t include minutes watched on computers or mobile devices. The ratings only measure U.S. audiences, not those in other countries. The top streaming titles for Dec. 29, 2025-Jan. 4, 2026, are below.
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