Audiences can’t get enough of the third season of Bridgerton. According to Nielsen (via Variety), the popular Netflix series was watched over the course of 1.4 billion minutes in the week that began on May 27 and came to a close on June 2. The total viewership number also included the first two installments of the series, as viewers from all over the world struggled to catch up in order to be ready for the new episodes of the production based on Julia Quinn‘s novels. As more information becomes available surrounding the release of the third season of Bridgerton, it’s clear that splitting the season into two parts might’ve been beneficial for the streaming platform.

The third season of Bridgerton followed Colin Bridgerton (Luke Newton) as he returned from abroad. The young man’s complicated relationship with Penelope Featherington (Nicola Coughlan) has stolen the spotlight during the third installment of the series, taking into account the shocking revelation surrounding the character. Ever since releasing the latest season of Stranger Things in two batches of episodes, Netflix has felt very confident about the strategy that can allow the platform to score more engagement over a short period of time. The viewership numbers obtained by the science fiction hit and by the third season of Bridgerton might point towards audiences preferring a single season split into two parts over Netflix’ usual release model of dumping all the episodes at once.

Another impressive fact about Nielsen’s report is how Bridgerton managed to score such numbers with only twenty episodes of the series available on Netflix by the time the engagement was measured. Since then, four more episodes of the television adaptation have been released, with fans now eagerly waiting for the fourth installment of Bridgerton. Luckily for them, the fourth season of the series was announced alongside the third installment. Netflix saw how successful Bridgerton became over the course of the pandemic, and the company decided to place all their bets on their latest smash hit.

‘Bridgerton’ Leads a Strong Streaming Field

Bridgerton wasn’t the only streaming highlight during the week of May 27. Audiences were also ready to enjoy Atlas, the action story starring Jennifer Lopez about a brave warrior who has to protect the world from a dangerous artificial intelligence model that threatens to change life as we know it. Viewers also gave Eric a shot, with the miniseries starring Benedict Cumberbatch as the titular character scoring 672 million minutes viewed during that week. Regardless of the competition, whenever a new season of Bridgerton drops, the beloved historical romance reminds the world why it quickly became one of the most successful television series in recent years.

The third season of Bridgerton is now available for streaming on Netflix. Stay tuned to Collider for more updates.