Netflix's "East of Eden" Nearly Doubles Its Audience in Week Two, Hitting 20 Million Views

Netflix's lavish miniseries adaptation of John Steinbeck's East of Eden, created by Zoe Kazan and starring Florence Pugh as the manipulative Cathy Ames, has become one of the streamer's biggest hits of the autumn. The seven-episode series premiered on October 1, 2026, and pulled in 6.5 million views in its first four days, topping Netflix's global TV chart. In its second week (October 5–11), it more than doubled that figure to 12.8 million views, bringing the running total to nearly 20 million. The drama spans the late 19th century through World War I, tracing Cathy's destructive impact on the Trask family across Connecticut and California's Salinas Valley. The cast also includes Christopher Abbott, Mike Faist, Hoon Lee and Ciarán Hinds. Critics have responded warmly — an 86% Rotten Tomatoes score and an 80 on Metacritic — and the so-called Netflix Effect has sent Penguin Classics sales of the original Steinbeck novel up by around 200%, cementing the show as a cultural talking point heading into the third week of its run.