A moody six-episode thriller about a sea creature attacking a tiny Newfoundland fishing village has become Netflix's biggest Canadian debut ever, and the province is suddenly being mentioned alongside New Zealand and Northern Ireland in the set-jetting conversation.
Below premiered on October 8 and pulled in 17 million views in four days, hitting No. 1 in 53 countries. The buzz started before launch, when a Times Square billboard showed star Josh Hartnett — playing a Newfoundland fisherman — with the tagline "All our fishermen look like here. Don't yours?" The government says it didn't pay for it; local fishermen, for their part, joked they could give Hartnett a run for his money.
The tourism question is more complicated. Newfoundland and Labrador has been losing ground internationally: 39,100 US visitors in 2025 (down 13 percent year over year, while US arrivals to Canada overall fell just 2.9 percent) and only 20,100 overseas visitors, a 15 percent drop while Canada as a whole welcomed 6.8 million overseas arrivals. Access is the bottleneck — 1.17 million nonstop airline seats into the province in 2025, well below the 1.32 million of 2016, with no nonstop route between the New York area and St. John's.
On screen, the action unfolds on the Avalon Peninsula, and Netflix has published a map of the six main filming spots. All are easy day trips from St. John's: Brigus South (population roughly 50, standing in for fictional Snook's Arm) is 45 minutes south; Pouch Cove, with its old fishermen's lodge, about 39 minutes north; Petty Harbour, where the nonprofit Fishing for Success taught the cast to fish, 15 minutes from downtown. One catch: Newfoundland has had a rental car shortage for over a decade, so sorting wheels early matters.
The show also spotlights real island history. Between 1946 and 1975, around 307 remote coastal communities were emptied under government resettlement programs and some 28,000 people relocated. The real Snook's Arm voted to relocate in 2017. Travellers can dig into this at The Rooms in St. John's or the O'Reilly House Museum in Placentia.
History says attention alone won't do the job. Northern Ireland turned Game of Thrones into roughly 350,000 visitors and £50 million in spending in 2018 — but only by marketing itself as "Game of Thrones Territory" with trails, installations and tours. New Zealand saw no measurable lift from The Lord of the Rings, yet The Hobbit, backed by the "100% Middle-earth" campaign, added an estimated 214,811 arrivals and $771.8 million in 2013-14. As of now, Newfoundland and Labrador Tourism has no campaign tied to Below; it wasn't involved in the production. For travellers who like arriving before the crowds, a spring 2027 trip could be the sweet spot — cliffs, icebergs and fishing villages included, sea monster not guaranteed.
