Did ‘Cobra Kai’ End on a Viewership High? ‘The Witcher: Sirens of the Deep’ Bombs and Valentine’s Hits – Netflix Top 10 Report

Welcome back to another comprehensive breakdown of the Netflix top 10s for the week ending February 16th. It was a very busy week in the Netflix top 10s, but in the case of Cobra Kai, it’s difficult to call the show’s final batch of episodes a success or disappointment given its complex release schedule. Here’s your full top 10 report covering The Witcher’s new anime, La Dolce Villa, Honeymoon Crasher, Love is Blind, Surviving Black Hawk Down, Cassandra, and more!

Note: In this report of Netflix’s hours viewed from February 10th, 2025 to February 16th, 2025, we’ll use “Complete Viewings Equivalent,” or CVE, expressed in millions. That means we divide the hours viewed announced by Netflix by the runtime of films or series. It allows for better comparisons between films and series, but it’s not an audience metric. It is the minimum number of viewings if they were all complete from the first second to the last of the film or season.

1. Cobra Kai ends on a satisfying/bad/middling note – who knows?

The final part of the final season of Cobra Kai was released last week, but we can’t analyze its numbers since they cover all episodes of Season 6 and not just the latest batch.

Viewing hours were up, but because the runtime was longer, views were down on the prior release. Here’s how season 6 has done throughout is eight weeks in the top 10 so far:

I also can’t use the methodology for series released in multiple batches of episodes because the releases were so spaced out that I’m missing several months to fill the gaps. The measurement in CVEs is, therefore, useless, just like the one in viewing hours. So your guess is basically as good as mine on its performance. Don’t do this again, Netflix, it’s terrible for (my) business.

Looking externally, the show looks like it maintained momentum throughout all three parts:

2. XO, Kitty is renewed and The Recruit will be canceled.

I think the verdict is in for The Recruit: with only 13.6M CVEs in 14 days, the series finds itself in the same waters as other second seasons of English-language series—and that has never ended well. So, cancellation seems inevitable, unless it wants to do a low-budget season 3 about women in the South of the US because that’s what helped Sweet Magnolias getting renewed.

It’s also worth noting that XO, Kitty was renewed for a second season this past week. It also seemed inevitable, given the numbers, as shown in the graph. There’s never anything shocking in streaming when you have the numbers in front of you.

3. Honeymoon Crasher doesn’t exactly crush it.

The French film Honeymoon crasher had a B-tier launch on Netflix with 11.4M CVEs in 5 days—far behind Under Paris (of course), but also a few steps behind Wingwomen and Family Pack, and slightly ahead of GTMAX. To be honest, that’s exactly where I would have put it, had I bet on it.

4. The short invasion of romance films in time for Valentine’s Day.

As usual, Netflix just launched a handful of romance films from all over the world in time for Valentine’s Day, hoping it would fill the needs of lovers globally.

First, Netflix rolled out Scott Foley in a postcard-perfect Italy, and the results for La Dolce Villa are fairly solid with 19.8M CVEs, placing it in the Top 10 launches for romantic films released on a Thursday on Netflix.

A Polish film with the cheerful title Death Before Wedding made its way into the international Top 10 this week, but its numbers are fairly weak—far from the best performances of Polish films released on a Wednesday in the past 12 months.

Let’s talk about the Indonesian film The Most Beautiful Girl in the World and the Indian film Dhoom Dhaam, both released on the same day. Dhoom Dhaam achieved the best launch for an Asian romantic film released on a Friday with 4.1M CVEs, while the Indonesian film also held its own with a solid debut of around 2.6M CVEs.

Now, you won’t convince me that dropping all those films just one or two days before Valentine’s Day didn’t hurt their performance, as people had already moved on Valentine’s Day by February 16. Releasing them a week earlier would have allowed them to maintain momentum over a longer period, but what do I know. The funny thing is that Netflix rolls out its Christmas films from November to the beginning of December and never one or two days before Christmas Day so they understand the concept of momentum.

5. The Witcher: Sirens of the Deep plunges The Witcher into a deeper hole

A franchise losing momentum is The Witcher, as Sirens of the Deep, the latest animated film set in the series/books/video game universe, had a much weaker launch than its predecessor, Nightmare of the Wolf. I’m waiting for the new season’s release later this year to see if Henry Cavill’s replacement will benefit the live-action series (probably not) and whether the franchise is at risk of fading out (which is possible).

6. Surviving Black Hawk Down

The military-historical docuseries Surviving Black Hawk Down took the top spot in the weekly English-language Top 10, but that’s mainly because it was released last Monday and had the entire week to rack up views. When compared to other docuseries released on a Monday, its performance is relatively weak. Also: is Monday becoming Netflix’s new favored release day of the week for docuseries?

7. Love is Blind returns strong.

The dating show Love is Blind is now in its 8th season, and there are no signs of fatigue. The launch of the first episodes is strong, with 4M CVEs in 3 days—better than the launches of seasons 5 and 7 and even seasons 3 and 6. The show has been renewed up to at least season 10, so this graph will likely be updated in the coming years/months.

8. Cassandra hits big in its second week.

The German sci-fi horror limited series had a powerful second week, showing a 144% increase. That’s the third-biggest increase in a second week for a new series released on a Thursday, after Baby Reindeer and the Belgian series High Tides. That’s a sleeper hit!

That’s all for this week – in case you missed it, we analyzed how all but one Netflix show lost viewership in 2024.