Picture: Netflix
The top 10 data is in, and Monster: The Ed Gein Story is the main story, but it’s hard to compare against previous seasons. We’ll also cover some of the other debuts that missed the Netflix top 10s entirely, as well as the latest season of Love Is Blind and follow-ups on titles like Billionaires’ Bunker and House of Guinness.
All the data used below is sourced from Netflix’s top 10 page, which updates weekly with the top 40 most-watched titles globally for that week, ranked by views. The data used below covers the period from September 29th to October 5th, 2025. We’ll be using the views metric in comparisons below. That metric is calculated by dividing the hours watched by the runtime. This metric enables more accurate comparisons between films and series, but it’s not a direct audience metric. It is the minimum number of viewings if they were all complete from the first second to the last second of the film or season.
Let’s kick off with the regular checking in on how well this week compares to all other Netflix weeks dating back to June 2023:
- English TV – 51,100,000 (Rank 41 of 120 weeks)
- English Film – 56,300,000 (Rank 106 of 120 weeks)
- Non-English TV – 36,700,000 (Rank 19 of 120 weeks)
- Non-English Film – 34,100,000 (Rank 61 of 120 weeks)
1. Monster: The Ed Gein Story Is Almost Impossible To Compare Against Other Titles…
Monster: The Ed Gein Story has been dominating the conversation all weekend since its launch last Friday. It’s once again brought into the spotlight another serial killer and the pros and cons of dramatizing their lives for entertainment. The same conversations were had for seasons 1 and 2, and they’ll undoubtedly come around again by the time season 4 comes around. That said, DAHMER still resides in Netflix’s all-time most-watched list in the #4 position as of the time of publishing, so clearly, there’s an audience for this.
Monster: The Ed Gein Story, in its first three days, garnered 12.2 million views from 90.6 million hours watched. In addition, the show has featured in the number 1 spot in 72 regions globally and is in the top 10s in all 91 countries.
Now, usually, we’d be able to do big comparisons, but there are two major reasons why we can’t:
- You can’t directly compare this season of Monster to prior seasons. For the first season, DAHMER, it was released on a Wednesday, whereas The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story was released on a Thursday. Ed Gein, as you know, was released on a Friday. Given that Netflix’s viewership period spans from Monday to Sunday, making exact comparisons will yield some skewed data, as DAHMER had two additional days to accumulate viewing hours.
- You can’t even compare it to other (recent) Netflix series… – The reasons for this are that Netflix rarely releases new scripted English language series on Fridays nowadays, with the exception of animated titles. We’ve had to go back to 2022 releases to compare them against such as The Sandman, Vikings: Valhalla, and The Lincoln Lawyer.
So, acknowledging that it’s completely futile to make these comparisons, we’ll place the graph here. Why the show was released on a Friday is anyone’s guess, but we do know no screeners were handed out ahead of time, and that Netflix is very careful about the image of Ryan Murphy and his shows. So this could be the finger being put firmly on the scale…
Our guess from here is that Ed Gein will ultimately be higher than Lyle and Erik Menendez, but will ultimately fall far short of Dahmer.
2. No Shows For Steve, Famous Last Words, Dudes and The New Force
Two other Friday releases were complete no-shows in the top 10s this week, with both garnering less than 2.1 million views each. We’re referring to Steve, the well-reviewed Cillian Murphy drama, and the new documentary on Dr. Goodall, titled Famous Last Words.
For Steve, we can see the movie is popping up and growing in the top 10s, but it got off to a very slow start on October 4th. It’s naturally most popular in the United Kingdom and Ireland, but has so far missed out on the daily top 10s in the US altogether. We suspect it might creep into the weekly top 10s next week, but whatever way you cut it, sadly, it’s a flop.
Picture Credit: FlixPatrol
In the case of Famous Last Words, it got an entirely surprise drop onto Netflix, with the press only alerted to its existence on the day of release. It has been featured in the top 10s in only five regions since its debut, with it in ninth position in the movie top 10 in the US as of the time of publishing.
Finally, on the non-English side, the Swedish series The New Force was also a no-show in the TV list alongside a new German spin-off to Alpha Males, with both garnering fewer than 1.4 million views in their opening days on Netflix.
3. Wayward Takes #1, But How Well Is It Performing?
Wayward, the Canadian mystery series starring Mae Martin and Toni Collette, got a big jump in week two, going from 8.2M views in week 1 to 14.1M in week 2, pulling in a grand total of 22.23M. That places it towards the bottom of our charts when compared to other limited scripted series from the past few years.
4. House of Guiness Season 2 Likelihood?
Last week, we covered how House of Guinness got off to an OK start, but have things picked up in week 2? A bit. Viewing hours rose 24% with the view count in week 2 sitting at 11.6M views. That’s a few million below Dept. Q, which received a season 2 renewal that presumably had a slightly smaller budget. It is well below other UK renewals in recent years, however, such as Black Doves, The Gentlemen, and Supacell. We’re not super optimistic for a second season here…
5. Alice in Borderland Season 3 On Par With Season 2
Season 3 of Alice in Borderland debuted slightly ahead of season 2 in its first week in the Netflix top 10s, but things have narrowed in week 2. Given that the audience has certainly stuck around, and considering the significant bumps in seasons 1 and 2, we suspect that the teased fourth season will happen, but we’ll have to wait for official word.
6. Billionaires’ Bunker in Week 3 Looks Prime for Renewal
Although it started quite average, Billionaire’s Bunker is still lingering in the top 10s in many countries around the globe, and despite a 58% drop in viewing hours in week 3, we suspect Netflix may pull the trigger on this one for a season 2, given that it’s outperforming the majority of Spanish series that have gotten renewals.
7. Love is Blind Is Back And Showing Decay
Love is Blind returned to its regular Wednesday spot on Netflix for its ninth season (season 8 got a special Valentine’s Day release), but the trend is clear: the dating reality show is continuing to see a decay in its viewership. It’s still renewed for at least one more season (more if our research tells us anything), but we wouldn’t be surprised if this one takes a break.
Those are our main stories for this week. Check in with our tools below to explore Netflix’s top 10 viewing data even more, and we’ll see you the same time next week!
