‘House of Cards’ season 3 accidentally leaks on Netflix early

This seems almost perfect for a storyline on “House of Cards,” even though it happened in real life. For just a few minutes on Wednesday, those who happened to be on Netflix accidentally got a chance to sneak a peek at some of the first episodes of the show’s upcoming third season. This was probably tremendously exciting for some, but also very short-lived. Within a mere matter of minutes, the streaming service managed to disable the availability of these episodes.

After the fact, Netflix tried to do their best to make fun of the situation on Twitter, commenting that the episodes are going to be available in full come February 27, and you will have a chance to watch them in full then.

Do we find this to be terrible for Netflix? Not even a little. While it’s possible that some may have spoilers now for early episodes, they were up so quickly during a work day that the overall footprint who noticed them may have been incredibly small.

Also, this may have been accidental, but it was not a bad way to really get promotion out there for the show again a little bit early. “House of Cards” really does have a lot of competition right now from other quality shows. “Better Call Saul” just premiered, and “The Walking Dead” returned on Sunday. Meanwhile, you’ve also got “The Americans” and “Justified” on FX, the premiere of “Bates Motel” in March, and “Game of Thrones” coming in April. That’s a lot of quality to digest, even if you only watch a few of those shows.