Like night follows day, Netflix releases a young adult-oriented series with slight occult features and a mixture of dramedy. Its latest offering follows heavily in the vein of its greatest successes, with it a rare spin-off from the massive streamer. More impressively, it has clocked up some seriously strong viewership.
Freeridge is a spin-off of On My Block, a critically celebrated teen drama series that managed to survive the Netflix axe several times — with its fourth and final season airing in 2021. Imagine that, a Netflix original is given time to fully tell its story and not get prematurely taken out.
The first spin-off series debuted on Netflix, just about scraping into its top ten most-viewed shows for the first week of February. Sitting at the ninth spot with 8.2 million hours viewed, it still has a long way to go before it challenges the likes of Lockwood & Co or Wednesday in the upper echelons of the charts.
The show follows a group of high school friends who are eager to try and break a mystical curse, with some fairly classic coming-of-age story tropes.
Featuring a very young cast looking to emulate the career jumpstarts of similar shows like Stranger Things and Wednesday, its most notable stars are Abbott Elementary’s Keyla Monterroso Mejia and former The Voice contestant Bryana Salaz. Whether Freeridge can live another day and get its second season is up in the air.
The series will hope the positive word of mouth powers it on, especially given the quiet release month February typically is. On My Block and Freeridge are both available to stream exclusively on Netflix.