The highly anticipated drama series Wednesday has taken the streaming world by storm, racking up an impressive 5.3 billion minutes viewed in its second week on Netflix, as reported by Deadline. This marks the second week in a row that Wednesday has achieved this impressive milestone, with only four other shows ever achieving this level of viewership – Stranger Things, Tiger King, Ozark, and now Wednesday.
But what is Wednesday about? Starring Jenna Ortega (You, The Fallout) as Wednesday Addams, the series follows the teenage years of Wednesday as she attends Nevermore Academy, where she works to develop her psychic abilities and solve a series of mysterious murders that have plagued her hometown. As she delves deeper into the supernatural mystery, Wednesday must also navigate complex relationships at her school and unravel the mystery that has shrouded her parents’ past.
The series features a star-studded cast including Gwendoline Christie (Game of Thrones), Jamie McShane (Bloodline), Percy Hynes White (The Gifted), Hunter Doohan (Your Honor), Emma Myers (Girl in the Basement), Joy Sunday (Dear White People), Georgie Farmer (The Evermoor Chronicles), Riki Lindhome (The Big Bang Theory), and Christina Ricci (The Addams Family). In addition, Catherine Zeta-Jones (National Treasure: Edge of History), Luis Guzmán (Shameless), Fred Arimisen (Portlandia), and Isaac Ordonez (A Wrinkle in Time) also appear in the show. Tim Burton (Edward Scissorhands), known for his distinctive visual style, serves as both director and executive producer for four out of the eight episodes, and Al Gough (Smallville) and Miles Millar (Into the Badlands, Smallville) are the creators and showrunners of Wednesday.
Wednesday has already proven to be a hit with audiences, with a total of 11.3 billion viewing minutes across its first two weeks on the charts. This puts it in second place behind Stranger Things, which amassed a total of 12.3 billion minutes viewed during its initial release window. It’s important to note that Wednesday is only eight episodes, while Stranger Things had 32 episodes to leverage at the time.
Despite the impressive numbers for Wednesday, it’s worth noting that Netflix dominated the charts for the week, taking all ten spots on the list. In second place behind Wednesday was Firefly Lane with 967 million minutes viewed, followed by Dead to Me with 898 million. The new film Troll, about an ancient troll awakened in the Norwegian mountains, came in at number four with 880 million minutes viewed.
Others on the list included Cocomelon, The Crown, Crime Scene: The Texas Killing Fields, NCIS, Bullet Train, and Manifest. It’s clear that Wednesday is a hit with audiences and has cemented its place as a must-watch series on Netflix.