We're just days away from the Stranger Things 5 finale on Wednesday, Dec, 31 (New Year's Eve). As the series comes to a closer, I wanted to take a look back at

With its finale on the horizon, the show has racked up impressive viewership numbers—but it's also had an impact on random pockets of culture, too.

The Netflix sci-fi show-turned-global-phenomenon doesn’t take place in Durham, nor was it filmed here. It’s set in the fictional town of Hawkins, Indiana, and was filmed in and around Atlanta. No matter, because the real ones know that Hawkins is Durham. Durham is Hawkins.

Stranger Things can learn from the past by avoiding the pitfalls of a highly-anticipated series finale.

Now, less than a month after Season 5 Volume 1 and days ahead of Volume 2, Netflix reports that the entirety of “Stranger Things” has crossed 1.2 billion total views. That statistic, calculated by dividing the total amount of time any portion of the series has ever been streamed by the combined runtimes of all available episodes,

With less than a month since the launch of its fifth season, Stranger Things has crossed the monumental threshold of 1.2 billion views. Netflix calculates this figure by dividing total viewing time by the total runtime of episodes,

Days before Volume 2’s three episodes dropped, Netflix said the entirety of the series had crossed 1.2 billion total views, the most for any of the streamer’s shows. When the eighth and final chapter, The Rightside Up, releases on Dec. 31, it will not only debut on Netflix, but movie theatres across Canada as well.

As Stranger Things readies its final farewell this New Year’s Eve, it marks the end of an era rather than just a show. What began as a nostalgic sci-fi story has, over nine years, become a global phenomenon that reshaped pop culture and collective memory.

The highly-anticipated second volume of ‘Stranger Things’ Season 5 is set to drop on Netflix on 26 December in India

As Stranger Things prepares to debut its series finale on Netflix on New Year’s Eve, several fans are questioning the production value of the final season. Stranger Things season 5 viewers criticized the visual style of the final season on Reddit.