Stranger Things

Stranger Things cemented itself as Netflix's defining franchise across four seasons, generating 1.36 billion viewing hours in its fourth season alone—a figure that places it second only to Squid Game on the platform's all-time charts. The Duffer Brothers' love letter to 1980s Spielberg and Stephen King launched Millie Bobby Brown into stardom, revived Kate Bush's "Running Up That Hill" to number one on iTunes 37 years after its release, and turned Hawkins, Indiana into the most iconic fictional small town since Twin Peaks. With a 96% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, the show proved streaming could build appointment-television-level anticipation, outpacing the average cultural shelf life of most competing series.