In a veritable Episode 011 — Attack of the Ratings Superlatives, both Netflix’s Stranger Things 4 and Disney+’s Obi-Wan Kenobi have come forth with varying degrees of “record viewership” claims.
Stranger Things 4, which released its first seven XL episodes on May 27, grandfather clocked in with Netflix’s “biggest premiere weekend ever” for an English-language TV series, by amassing nearly 287 million hours viewed. (It thus lapped Bridgerton, which previously held the record of 193 million hours.)
Netflix also says that the latest adventures of Eleven & Co. reached “#1” by their own in-house metric in a total of 83 countries, marking another premiere weekend record.
In turn, as previously reported, Stranger Things heroine Max Mayfield’s favorite Kate Bush song (at least until she grows sick of it!), “Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God)” shot up to No. 1 on iTunes, some 37 years after its original release.
Obi-Wan‘s superlatives, a bit less defined they are, errrm. But regarding the live-action Star Wars series’ double-episode premiere, the House of Mouse tweeted on Tuesday morning, “Thank you to the best fans in the galaxy for making @ObiWanKenobi the most-watched #DisneyPlus Original series premiere globally to date, based on hours streamed in an opening weekend.” (TVLine inquired, but no further viewership details are being made available.)
TVLine readers are thus far giving Stranger Things 4 an average grade of “A,” while Obi-Wan‘s first two episodes are netting an “A-.”
Obi-Wan continues its six-episode run this Wednesday, while Stranger Things 4 drops its final two, XXL episodes on Friday, July 1.