Harry & Meghan Vol. 2 drops tonight – or tomorrow morning, depending where you are in the world. East Coast gets it at 3 am, I believe, and I will be able to watch two episodes or more before I start work. I’m hoping that we start getting to the meat of the story quickly, after a three-episode love story wind-up. While I think there are a lot of bad takes about the series thus far, I also think some people have some nuanced analysis and even some good-faith criticism. My good-faith criticism is that their courtship up to their engagement should have been two episodes, not three. Still, you can’t deny that people are watching and that everyone has an opinion. As such, Netflix released some astounding numbers:

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s controversial Netflix special Harry & Meghan was the second most-watched English language television show on the streamer over the past week, the platform announced Tuesday, with 81.5 million hours watched since the first half of the documentary series premiered Thursday.

The debut represented the largest premiere in Netflix history for a documentary in its first week, according to the platform, with more than 28 million households tuning in to the first three episodes. In the U.K. alone, more than 2.4 million people tuned into the first episode when it first began streaming on Thursday.

The series was overshadowed only by Tim Burton’s smash series Wednesday, which brought in nearly 270 million hours of viewership, marking the third consecutive week the show was part of Netflix’s top 10 English-language programs.

Harry & Meghan was listed as Netflix’s top television series on Friday, the day after it premiered, before being replaced by Wednesday again.

[From Forbes]

To be fair, Wednesday is a lot of fun! It doesn’t have to be either-or. I loved Wednesday and I get why that show hit the audience sweet-spot of appealing to tweens, teens, 50-somethings and everyone in-between. Now, I would love to see a demographic breakdown of the viewership for Harry & Meghan, and I strongly suspect that many people will pick up the series and watch the whole thing in one weekend once Volume 2 comes out. Especially if it’s as explosive as everyone thinks it will be.

Photos courtesy of Netflix.