>> Netflix uses React on the client and server, but they identified that the client-side portion wasn't needed for the first interaction, so they leaned on what the browser can already do, and deferred client-side React. The story isn't that they're abandoning React, it's that they're able to defer it on the client until it's was needed. React folks should be championing this as a feature.
The initial page load doesn't use React. It doesn't need it. Its a pretty simple page with a bunch of links and a couple of signup/signin buttons. Once you click one of these links, the subsequent pages load React in order to handle the richer client-side interactions on those pages.
Seems reasonable. React allows for a better User Experience than static pages, but at the cost of additional load time. So don't load it on the first page, when your users are most likely to bail, and then load it once you need it.
Maybe we're starting to see the pendulum swing back the other way. 3 or 4 years ago, we seemed to go from 'SPA Nowhere' to 'SPA Everywhere,' and now maybe we're settling on 'SPA Where We Need It'