‘Stranger Things’ Farewell Season Crushes Every Rival in Final TV Ratings Battle

The 2025-2026 television season is officially in the books, and the numbers tell a story of two very different kinds of hits sharing the crown. Cross platform ratings for the season, measured over 35 days of viewing, show one series towering above every other program on television. That kind of dominance rarely happens without a cultural moment fueling it, and this year had one of the biggest in recent memory.

Streaming and broadcast television spent the year competing for attention in wildly different ways, with prestige dramas, true crime specials and network procedurals all fighting for a shrinking pool of eyeballs. Nielsen’s multiplatform data ultimately determined which shows pulled in the biggest audiences across broadcast, cable and streaming for the entire season. Few expected the gap between first and second place to be quite this wide.

Netflix’s ‘Stranger Things’ finished as the season’s most watched non sports series with 32.9 million viewers, ahead of the streamer’s ‘His & Hers’ at 25.6 million and ‘Sean Combs, The Reckoning’ at 20.6 million. That margin over second place came out to roughly 7.3 million viewers, a gap that speaks to just how singular the show’s farewell run truly was. The final season’s total even surpassed its own earlier benchmark, since an initial 28 day measurement had it at 30.6 million viewers before the extra week of tracking added millions more.

While ‘Stranger Things’ owned the streaming conversation, broadcast television found its own breakout story in an unexpected corner of the Yellowstone universe. CBS’ ‘Marshals’ emerged as the most watched broadcast show of the season with 19.3 million viewers, while Paramount Network’s ‘Dutton Ranch’ became the only cable series to crack the ranker at 19.2 million. For a freshman drama to outperform established network staples in its debut year is no small feat.

CBS didn’t just win with one show either. The network held four of the top five broadcast series, including ‘Marshals’ and ‘Tracker’ alongside its top rated comedy ‘Ghosts.’ Four new CBS series made the chart altogether, with ‘Marshals,’ ‘Sheriff Country,’ ‘Boston Blue’ and ‘CIA’ standing as the season’s top four new shows. That kind of sweep reflects a network doubling down on procedural storytelling at a moment when many rivals have leaned harder into limited series and event television.

ABC carved out its own lane in the demo battle. The network claimed the most watched series among adults 18 to 49 with ‘High Potential,’ along with the most watched comedy in that demo, ‘Abbott Elementary.’ Elsewhere in the top tier, ‘Tracker,’ ‘High Potential,’ ‘Matlock’ and ‘Sheriff Country’ rounded out broadcast’s top five, an order that stayed remarkably consistent from earlier in the season.

The full 2025-2026 broadcast season ran from September 14, 2025 through May 24, 2026, and these final numbers offer the clearest picture yet of how audiences actually watched television this year. With ‘Stranger Things’ closing out its story on top and ‘Marshals’ proving broadcast can still produce a genuine breakout, the season leaves plenty to unpack. Which finale hit you harder this year, the Upside Down saying goodbye or the Marshals riding into their surprise number one spot?