‘East of Eden’ Tops Netflix’s Charts as Florence Pugh’s Steinbeck Adaptation Opens Big, or Does It?

John Steinbeck’s sprawling American epic has rarely been an easy sell for a mass audience. It’s a dense, morally tangled story about family, guilt and free will, and it’s a long way from true crime or reality TV. That makes the ‘East of Eden’ Netflix debut one of the more interesting streaming stories of the week.

The seven-episode limited series was created by Zoe Kazan and stars Florence Pugh as Cathy Ames and Christopher Abbott as Adam Trask. It also features Mike Faist, Tracy Letts, Martha Plimpton, Hoon Lee, Joseph Zada, Joe Anders and Ciarán Hinds, and Kazan has said Pugh was her only choice for Cathy. Pugh also serves as an executive producer, and the show premiered on Netflix on October 1.

Netflix’s weekly ratings are now in, and the results are both strong and a little complicated. A post from What’s on Netflix shared the key figure: the Steinbeck adaptation debuted at No. 1 with 6.5 million views. Those views were earned in just its first four days of streaming, and they took the show to the top of the streamer’s weekly TV rankings.

‘East of Eden’ beat a crowded field. ‘Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story’ came second with 5.7 million views in its third week, while the ‘A Different World’ reboot took third with 5.1 million in its second week. The unscripted competition series ‘Wonka’s The Golden Ticket’ landed in fourth place with 4.3 million.

Netflix measures views by dividing total hours watched by a title’s runtime. With ‘East of Eden’ running roughly 7 hours, the 6.5 million figure represents a lot of time spent in Steinbeck’s Salinas Valley.

Not everyone is cheering. Deadline described it as a soft opening, noting that it was the lowest chart-topping debut since the end of March, when the second season of ‘One Piece’ led with 5.9 million views in its third week. What’s on Netflix’s comparison of recent limited series puts the debut 17th on its opening-week list, well below the biggest launches of the past two years.

Still, the context matters. A prestige period drama based on a 1952 novel isn’t built to chase blockbuster numbers, and it still beat a sizable lineup of competition. For a limited series that required a big creative commitment, holding the top spot is a clear win.

Reviews have been strong. The series opened with around 89% on Rotten Tomatoes, edging out the 1955 James Dean film by two points, and it has an 80 on Metacritic. It’s also the third-highest-rated TV series on Pugh’s resume, and career-high TV scores for co-stars Faist and Anders.

The show has also sparked a boost for the source material. Penguin Classics has reportedly seen a 200% increase in sales since Netflix announced the greenlight. Viewers in 93 countries tuned in during its opening stretch, according to FandomWire.

Part of the appeal is how the series reframes the story. Netflix describes Cathy as an antihero whose life becomes tangled with generations of the Trask family, particularly brothers Adam and Charles, and the show explores the darker side of the California dream. Collider notes Cathy is given far more room than in the famous 1955 movie, which concentrated on the later part of the novel.

That choice puts Pugh at the center of a morally complex role, and critics have focused on her performance and the scale of Kazan’s adaptation. Kazan also had to make significant cuts and changes to fit the sprawling novel into seven episodes.

"Good and evil are a choice." East of Eden, a fresh interpretation of the Steinbeck classic, premieres October 1. Starring Florence Pugh, Christopher Abbott, Mike Faist, Hoon Lee, Joseph Zada, Joe Anders, Tracy Letts, Ciarán Hinds, and Martha Plimpton. https://t.co/ym1vEJ8Bau

— Netflix (@netflix) September 2, 2026

The momentum comes during a busy stretch for the actress. She’s attached to ‘Cassandra at the Wedding,’ based on Dorothy Baker’s 1962 novel, in which she’ll play identical twin sisters. If ‘East of Eden’ keeps climbing, it may well be remembered as one of the defining TV events of the year.

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