Stranger Things Will Likely 'Do a Time Jump' in Fifth and Final Season

Courtesy of Netflix

The Duffer Brothers have some important elements of Stranger Things' final season already sorted out.

"I'm not sure we're ready to say yet a start date for shooting," Matt Duffer told TVLine. "But a lot of it is pretty well mapped out."

"We learn a lot every time we make a [season]," he explained, noting that plans could shift before or during production. "We've learned a lot just working with all of our new actors and the ones that we've worked with for a long time over this year [making season 4], so I'm sure it'll change a little bit from that outline."

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One thing they've had to take into consideration is how their young stars have grown up before viewers' eyes during the show's six-year run (so far).

"I'm sure we will do a time jump," said Ross. "Ideally, we'd have shot [seasons 4 and 5] back to back, but there was just no feasible way to do that. So these are all discussions we're going to have with our writers when we start the room up."

He continued, "Believe it or not, we're still working on season 4. We're trying to finish the final two episodes, they're so massive." (It was previously reported that the season 4 finale clocks in at nearly two and a half hours.)

Matt recently told Empire: "The final episode has more FX shots than the entirety of season 3."

Added Ross, "There's an hour-long chunk in the final episode that just doesn't stop. It's the most complicated thing we've ever attempted to do. [It's] all tension and dread, with a runtime that would be long even for a movie. Then — well, everything goes to hell."

Courtesy of Netflix (L to R) Caleb McLaughlin, Gaten Matarazzo and Sadie Sink in Stranger Things

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Volume 1 of Stranger Things' fourth season premiered on May 27 — nearly three years after season 3's 2019 drop, largely due to delays caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

In a joint statement to Variety, the Duffer Brothers previously revealed, "The gap [between seasons 4 and 5] should be quite a bit shorter this time, due to the fact that we already have an initial outline, and we can't imagine there will be another six-month forced hiatus."

The first seven episodes of Stranger Things 4 are now streaming on Netflix; episodes 8 and 9 will drop July 1 on the streaming service.