'Stranger Things' season 5 release makes Netflix crash, but some fans don't buy it

It seems streaming giant Netflix on Thursday fell into the Upside Down and crashed on the release date of the highly anticipated first part of season five.

Fan reports on social media in addition to thousands of reports on outage tracker Downdetector surfaced, despite Netflix increasing its bandwidth by 30 per cent to avoid a crash.

The first part of the cult classic show's final season has four episodes, while the second part will have the remaining three episodes. The second set of episodes will release from December 26 onwards, with the grand finale releasing on January 1, 2026.

"It seems like there are some stranger things happening on Netflix right now," an X user quipped.

"NETFLIX FIX YOURSELF RIGHT NOW BRO, IVE BEEN WAITING THREE YEARS," another X user wrote.

"Oh look something everyone could have predicted ... at this point every time something crashes on a new release I’m assuming these people do it on purpose," a Redditor pointed out.

"They don’t care. $100 says behind the scenes they see it as a badge of honor rather than a hurdle to overcome" another Redditor wrote.

Set in autumn 1987, the final season sees the beloved Hawkins gang unite to fight Vecna against all odds, including a military quarantine, which has also intensified their hunt for Eleven.

The packed season five cast includes Winona Ryder, David Harbour, Millie Bobby Brown, Finn Wolfhard, Gaten Matarazzo, Caleb McLaughlin, Noah Schnapp, Jamie Campbell Bower, Sadie Sink, Natalia Dyer, Charlie Heaton, Joe Keery, Maya Hawke, and more.