Netflix experienced a brief outage on New Year's Eve coinciding with the premiere of the highly anticipated finale of "Stranger Things" Season 5. Millions of fans logging in simultaneously to watch "Chapter Eight: The Rightside Up" caused the streaming platform to crash, displaying error messages for some users. This marks the second time this season that a major "Stranger Things" release has strained Netflix's infrastructure, with a similar incident occurring during the Volume 1 premiere in November. Service was gradually restored.