Image: Netflix
Netflix has announced the release date(s) for Stranger Things Season 4, which also acts as the show’s penultimate season.
Netflix has released a slew of Stranger Things-related announcements, including a release date for Season 4. It will now be split into two volumes, with ‘Vol. 1’ debuting on May 27 and ‘Vol. 2’ arriving on July 1. There is a bit of sad news as well: the fifth season of Stranger Things will end the show.
Series creators Matt and Ross Duffer published an open letter to fans, stating that Season 4 is the most ambitious season of the series thus far with ‘nine scripts’ of over ‘eight hundred pages' worth. The season’s runtime is also twice the length of previous seasons, which is what pushed the duo to release Season 4 in halves. While this suggests that Season 4 has double the episodes, it consists of just nine episodes whereas Season 3 had eight.
Netflix announced Season 4’s episode titles a while back:
- The Hellfire Club
- Vecna’s Curse
- The Monster and The Superhero
- Dear Billy
- The Nina Project
- The Dive
- The Massacre At Hawkins Lab
- Papa
- The Piggyback
We can safely assume that Season 4’s episodes are longer than usual, hence the doubled runtime. The Duffers’ letter also announced that Season 5 will end Stranger Things - but not for good. The upcoming fifth season will, “finish this tale of a powerful girl named Eleven and her brave friends, of a broken police chief and a ferocious mom, of a small town called Hawkins and an alternate dimension known only as the Upside Down.”
However, the Duffers add that, “There are still many more exciting stories to tell within the world of Stranger Things; new mysteries, new adventures, new unexpected heroes,” which suggests that while the adventures of Eleven and friends end with the main series, upcoming spin-offs will continue to explore the universe further. Netflix is no stranger to expanding the universes of their popular titles, so this is no surprise. The Witcher had multiple spin-offs in development before Season 2 even premiered on the streaming service.
Season 4 of Stranger Things will arrive three years after Season 3, which is a long wait between seasons for any TV show. Netflix’s last few teasers have hinted that Season 4 will feature a certain spoilerific character in Russia, flashbacks to Eleven’s childhood as a laboratory experiment and a spooky haunted house. To recap, Season 4 Vol. 1 drops on May 27 with Vol. 2 to follow on July 1.