When Stranger Things finally returns to Netflix next week for its fourth season after an extended three-year absence, it will do so at a time when the streaming giant finds itself stuck in a real-world version of the Upside Down. The once unstoppable darling of Silicon Valley and Hollywood has been battered by a constant barrage of bad news in recent months, from stalled growth and a massive stock collapse to rolling waves of layoffs. It’s a glum new normal for Netflix, one which makes a successful launch of ST4 — always set to be a critical moment for the streamer’s 2022 slate — dramatically more important.
The biggest (and most obvious) reason Netflix needs the Duffer brothers’ supernatural sensation to sizzle again can be summed up in a single word: subscribers. Even knowing that ST4 is on its summer schedule, the company has warned investors it expects to lose as many as 2 million members over the next few months, reversing its nearly uninterrupted streak of growth during the past decade. (The streamer technically finished the first quarter of 2022 with slightly fewer subscribers, but that was only due to its exit from Russia.) Wall Street has already built these expected declines into its assessment of Netflix’s health: It’s why the company’s stock spent most of April in free fall. So at this point, what’s most important for Netflix is that when the final subscriber counts for the second and third quarters of the year come in, it is able to either match or improve upon its own glum forecasts. How audiences greet the return of Stranger Things could play a key role in whether Netflix achieves that goal.
Visit Vulture to read this article.
