The period drama’s weekend total was the most successful opening weekend of an English-language series on the streaming platform. It appears that season 2’s intense love triangle between the Sharma sisters and Anthony is much more gripping as it is now on track to beat the first season’s record of Netflix’s most-watched show in its first month, when audiences combined for a total of 625 million hours in 2020.
2020 was understandably a big year for Netflix as two originals surpassed the 600 million mark for hours watched within the first 28 days for the first time. After Money Heist: Part 4 set the tone earlier in the year with 619 million hours viewed, Bridgerton’s first season beat it by a couple of million before the year ended. However, Squid Game was an even larger hit as the South Korean TV series topped the charts for months, totaling 1.6 billion hours viewed. It is unreasonable to expect Bridgerton season 2 to beat Squid Game, however it’s all but poised to outdo the success of the first season and guarantee that Bridgerton is going to come back for more seasons beyond the third and fourth ones. The new record set by Bridgerton’s second season is definitely surprising after the show lost one of Season 1’s standout performers, Regé-Jean Page, who played the Duke of Hastings. With Netflix increasing subscription prices in the United States and restricting account sharing, the success of originals like Bridgerton is important. These massive hits guarantee that users have a reason to keep on subscribing. If nothing else, the back-to-back accomplishments of Bridgerton should cement it as a flagship series for Netflix, which means that we can expect more seasons as well as prequels like the one featuring a young Queen Charlotte.
