The highly anticipated debut of the first volume of the fifth and final season of “Stranger Things” has finally arrived, delighting fans who have been eagerly waiting. On Wednesday, the streaming giant released the initial four episodes, sparking excitement among viewers.

However, as the clock struck 5 p.m. PST/8 p.m. EST, fans were met with an unexpected hurdle. Instead of diving into the latest adventures of the Hawkins gang, many were greeted with a frustrating message: “Something went wrong.” The glitch left fans temporarily unable to access the new episodes, causing a wave of disappointment.

This brief outage, which disrupted streaming for about three minutes, sent fans into a frenzy. They quickly took to social media platform X to express their concerns and share their experiences.

The error message read, “Something went wrong. Sorry, we’re having trouble with your request. You’ll find lots to explore on the home page,” leaving viewers scrambling for answers.

The incident triggered a range of reactions from fans online. One user humorously noted, “NETFLIX CRASHED HAHAHAHAHAHAHA #StrangerThings5,” while another speculated, “Did Netflix servers just crash? Stranger Things is going to break the whole internet tonight.” A third fan pleaded, “OH MY GOD NETFLIX PLS FIX YOURSELF I WANNA WATCH.”

Another wrote, ‘Did Netflix servers just crash? Stranger Things is going to break the whole internet tonight,’ while one added, ‘OH MY GOD NETFLIX PLS FIX YOURSELF I WANNA WATCH.’ 

Daily Mail has reached out to Netflix for comment but did not immediately hear back. 

The long-awaited first volume of the fifth and final season of Stranger Things has now been released to eager fans – with four episodes dropping on Wednesday

But just as the new episodes hit the streaming site at 5pm PST/8pm EST – viewers were shocked to find that they were unable to access the episodes with a ‘Something went wrong’ message popping up on screens instead

Some fans were sent into a meltdown with one penning on X,’ NETFLIX CRASHED HAHAHAHAHAHAHA #StrangerThings5′

‘Billion dollar company can’t even keep the servers from crashing,’ a fan typed, and one shared, ‘I feel like you guys should’ve known Netflix was gonna crash.’ 

Another said, ‘and netflix is down……..,’ and a viewer commented, ‘So much hype and highly anticipated the servers we down i’m still ready tho.’

‘You should know better. You’re not new at this,’ one fan penned, seemingly directing the message to the streaming site itself. 

‘We’ve been waiting for 3 years for the moment. How could you not realize how big this was going to be and not prepare for it? We broke #netflix.’ 

One fan of the show added, ‘Waited all day in excitement just for Netflix to crash,’ and another said, ‘I knew it was gonna crash.’ 

‘NETFLIX HAS CRASHED IM CRYINGGGG OMG LET ME IN IN WANNA WATCH IT,’ a fan shared, as one questioned, ‘Anyone else’s Netflix crashed? Won’t show any titles or anything.’ 

A viewer pointed out, ‘Everyone going to Twitter to see if Netflix crashed,’ and one typed, ‘Episode 1 isn’t working. Tried downloading it too and nothing. The rest of the episodes work though.’ 

‘What happened?????? So much unnecessary advertising by the way, because Stranger Things sells itself, for the platform to not hold up hahahahaha they seriously didn’t foresee the amount of connections they were going to have today????’ a fan also penned. 

Another wrote, ‘Did Netflix servers just crash? Stranger Things is going to break the whole internet tonight,’ while one added, ‘OH MY GOD NETFLIX PLS FIX YOURSELF I WANNA WATCH’

Stranger Things – a Netflix series created by The Duffer Brothers – first aired on the streaming site back in 2016. 

The show garnered critical acclaim and popularity among viewers, which has since been followed by four additional seasons.

The fourth season premiered back in 2022 and three years later, fans have been gifted the first volume of the fifth and final season consisting of four episodes. 

Three more episodes are slated to drop next month on Christmas Day with the finale being released on New Year’s Eve. 

The star-studded cast includes Millie Bobby Brown, Winona Ryder, David Harbour, Finn Wolfhard, Gaten Matarazzo, Caleb McLaughlin, Noah Schnapp, Sadie Sink, Natalia Dyer, Charlie Heaton, Joe Kerry and Maya Hawke. 

But it is not the first time that Stranger Things fans have crashed the streaming site. 

Back in July 2022 when season four, part two of the hit show dropped on Netflix – a similar crash occurred only minutes after the episodes became available. 

And when the first part was also released, over 13,000 Netflix users reported outage.  

Three more episodes are slated to drop next month on Christmas Day with the finale being released on New Year’s Eve

During a recent interview with Backstage, both Millie Bobby Brown and Noah Schnapp talked about the show coming to an end and the final day on set. 

‘I think it’s really hitting now, honestly, just like doing the press tour,’ Brown expressed.

‘It’s very hard to think about doing this for one last time with your friends and reflecting on your childhood so intimately. Some of this feels like therapy in a way.’ 

Schnapp recalled going back to L.A. to audition for another project and while inside is hotel room, the actor thought to himself, ‘Oh, my God, I don’t want to work on anything else. 

‘I just want to do Stranger Things forever. I was just so devastated, like I’ll never get that back, that experience on set. Then the next day I was fine.’ 

Brown chimed in to add, ‘It’s like a breakup. It’s like the girls get over it quicker. But I honestly feel like it was one day of just crying, then I was like, OK, so what’s next? Like, no, I gotta keep going.’ 

While talking to The Times in regards to the final season of Stranger Things, Matt Duffer expressed, ‘It’s been really emotional.

‘Filming the final week, it felt like every day we were shooting an actor’s final scene and saying goodbye. Everybody was sobbing,’ he further revealed.

Brown added, ‘It’s very hard to think about doing this for one last time with your friends and reflecting on your childhood so intimately. Some of this feels like therapy in a way’; seen earlier this month in London 

‘I just want to do Stranger Things forever. I was just so devastated, like I’ll never get that back, that experience on set. Then the next day I was fine,’ Schnapp said

And on the topic of the finale, he said, ‘Every character’s ending needed to feel right. That was more important than providing the fans with the ending they’re hoping for.

‘But as much as possible I don’t even look online. I’m not actually even sure what people want to happen.’

His brother Ross also shared elsewhere in the interview, ‘The goal was always to scale up each series with the age of the characters and our audience, but then we keep getting new audiences. Hopefully parents don’t get too mad at us.’

Matt then teased, ‘I would say season five is not as violent as season four, but it has the most violent death of any season.’