This article contains some spoilers for Season 4.
With “Stranger Things 4” now wrapped up, we can begin looking forward to “Stranger Things 5,” which will indeed be the FINAL season of Netflix‘s hit series. The Season 4 finale set the stage for a season that will bring the action entirely back to Hawkins, with the rift between Hawkins and the Upside Down now completely opened up by the monster behind it all, Vecna.
“Stranger Things 4” was massive in both scope and length, the final two episodes alone running nearly 4 hours long. Will “Stranger Things 5” follow suit in the length department?
Don’t expect it to, the Duffer Brothers tell Variety this week.
“The only reason we don’t expect it to be as long is because if you look at [Season 4], it’s almost a two-hour ramp-up before our kids really get drawn into the supernatural mystery,” Matt Duffer explains. “You get to know them, you get to see them in their lives, what they’re struggling with, adapting to high school, and so forth. Steve’s trying to find a date, all of that. None of that obviously is going to be occurring in the first two episodes of [Season 5].”
“For the first time ever, we don’t wrap things up at the end of [Season] 4, so it’s going to be moving,” he continues. “I don’t know that it’s going to be going 100 miles an hour at the start of 5, but it’s going to be moving pretty fast. Characters are already going to be in action.
“They’re already going to have a goal and a drive, and I think that’s going to carve out at least a couple hours and make this [final] season feel really different.”
When can you expect Season 5 to premiere? Likely not until at least 2024.