We Finally Have a Release Date for 'Stranger Things 4'
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Netflix has announced that Stranger Things 4 will air in two segments, one starting in the spring and one starting in the summer.
The co-creators of the show, Matt and Ross Duffer, have hinted about what might happen in Stranger Things 4. So far, there have been multiple teaser trailers that hint at what's to come in the next season.
The Duffers also announced that Stranger Things 4 will be the penultimate season.
Stranger Things 3 debuted on July 4, 2019, which means since July 5 (a.k.a the next day) fans have been hungering to know what comes next. But it's been a long, long pandemic-extended wait — and the wait isn't quite over yet, though it's getting close. Throughout the break, information about what's on the horizon has only come out in dribs and drabs, mostly through cryptic teaser trailers, leading fans to try and put the pieces together themselves. But co-creators of the show, Matt and Ross Duffer, have finally made some announcements about Stranger Things 4, and the fate of the show's future.
Stranger Things 4 will debut in two volumes.
Stranger Things 4 will debut on May 27, 2022. But that doesn't mean you can binge the whole thing in one sitting (as much as we'd like to). That's only going to be "volume one" for the series. The next batch gets released after a break. Five weeks later, Stranger Things 4, Vol. 2 will premiere on July 1, 2022. That means the second batch of episodes will debut around the same time that the third season did way back in 2019. Stranger Things will always have those summery, Fourth of July vibes.
Why the break? "With nine scripts, over eight hundred pages, almost two years of filming, thousands of visual effects shots, and a runtime of nearly twice the length of any previous season, Stranger Things 4 was the most challenging season yet," the Duffers said in a statement released by Netflix. "Given the unprecedented length, and to get it to you as soon as possible, Season 4 will be released in two volumes."
Season 4 will be the penultimate season.
Sure, everyone has to wait a little longer for the fourth season. But we're spared the anticipation of what comes after that. In the same statement, the Duffers announced that Season 4 will not be the last season, but Stranger Things 5 will be.
This is pretty much what the Duffers have been saying from the beginning. Way back in 2017, they told New York magazine that they only saw the show going for a limited number of seasons.
"We’re thinking it will be a four-season thing and then out,” Ross told the magazine. "I don’t know if we can justify something bad happening to them once a year," Matt added.
After Stranger Things 3, everyone was looking to keep it going — even those working on the show. "Hearts were heard breaking in Netflix headquarters when the Brothers made four seasons sound like an official end, and I was suddenly getting phone calls from our actors’ agents,” Levy says in Entertainment Weekly. “The truth is we’re definitely going four seasons and there’s very much the possibility of a fifth. Beyond that, it becomes I think very unlikely.”
Thankfully, the Duffers agreed. "Season four won’t be the end. We know what the end is, and we know when it is," Ross Duffer told The Hollywood Reporter. "[The pandemic] has given us time to look ahead, figure out what is best for the show. Starting to fill that out gave us a better idea of how long we need to tell that story."
In addition, you can't keep those kids in Hawkins forever. The actors are looking visibly much older, careening toward adulthood. The cast has other movies and projects in the pipeline. The Duffers do, too. With the renewal of Stranger Things, Netflix also announced a development deal with the Duffers that includes "other film and series projects our members will love.”
But, while we still have them, what's actually going to happen in Stranger Things 4?
We'll probably get more of Eleven's backstory.
So far, Netflix has released a few teaser trailers, and the second looks like it's set in the facility where Eleven grew up. We don't see much except dark hallways, kids with shaved heads and hospital gowns, weird toys — an ominous Magic 8 Ball, anyone? — and the imposing Papa overseeing it all. Eleven looks like she's locked up in her own room, solo, but still hears a message from the outside: "Eleven, are you listening?"
You know what that means: Backstory time! We've already known from previous seasons that Eleven isn't the only one of her kind. A flashback like this might shed more light on where Eleven came from, what else the facility was up to and what happened to all those other kids.
What might happen? We'll probably get more hints. The code in the YouTube description of the teaser says this is "002/004," meaning that it's the second of four probable glimpses we'll get of the show before it debuts.
It doesn't look likely that we'll be staying solely in Hawkins.
Creepy child-keeping facilities aside, we love Hawkins, Indiana. We've come to know the ins and outs of the town, from the arcade to the mall to the secret underground laboratory where sometimes scientists open up portals into unknown dimensions and unleash psionic monsters on innocent people. You know, typical small-town stuff.
But when Netflix announced it was renewing Stranger Things for a fourth season, the show tweeted out one cryptic "we're not in Hawkins anymore" message.
That lead credence to the theory that Stranger Things 4 will follow up on the Russians and their "unseen prisoner." Turns out, the theorists are right. The first teaser trailer for the series confirmed that the action will head overseas with Hopper. "It’s not all good news for our 'American,'" the Duffers said in a statement. "He is imprisoned far from home in the snowy wasteland of Kamchatka, where he will face dangers both human ... and other." Poor Hopper can never catch a break!
The kids, too, look like they've escaped Hawkins, as the trailer marked "Welcome to California" reveals.
Something about this make it seem like the Golden State won't be so golden after all.
Harbor isn't the only returning Stranger Things cast member — and interesting new actors are being added.
It's never a guarantee that our favorites will return — the young cast seems like it's looking to move on to bigger, blockbuster projects. (See: Millie Bobbie Brown in Godzilla vs. Kong, Finn Wolfhard in Ghostbusters: Afterlife.) But the teasers and interviews confirm the return David Harbour, Millie Bobbie Brown, Finn Wolfhard, Gaten Matarazzo, Caleb McLaughlin, Noah Schnapp, Joe Keery, Maya Hawke and other major cast members are returning.
What about the newbies? To round out the cast, they've added ... Freddy Krueger? Robert Englund, best known for playing the famed Nightmare on Elm Street baddie, is joining the cast. He fits in perfectly with that nostalgic-for-'80s-horror vibe. According to The Hollywood Reporter, he'll play "Victor Creel, a disturbed and intimidating man who is imprisoned in a psychiatric hospital for a gruesome murder in the 1950s." Perfect.
The third teaser trailer, released at Netflix's "TUDUM" event, is titled "Welcome to the Creel House." As you might expect, Creel House is a little ... creepy.
So not only do we have Eleven's backstory and Hopper's Russian adventure, we have a '50s timeline added to the mix, and a new set of characters to figure out. According to The Hollywood Reporter, in addition to Englund, other newer faces include Jamie Campbell Bower (aka Harry Potter's young Gellert Grindelwald), who will play an orderly at a psychiatric hospital; Eduardo Franco (Booksmart); Joseph Quinn (Catherine the Great) and Tom Wlaschiha (Game of Thrones).
One Stranger Things 4 fan theory sees potential for a crossover with another event series.
Buzzfeed spotted a pretty convincing theory from Reddit user Gamer_Nation, based on the pattern of previous Stranger Things dates.
If Stranger Things took place in winter of 1983, Stranger Things 2 took place in fall of 1984, and Stranger Things 3 took place in summer of 1985, then it would follow that Stranger Things 4 would take place in spring 1986. In Russia. Right when the Chernobyl disaster takes place.
It's a stretch, since Kamchatka and Chernobyl are on complete opposite sides of Russia. But in some way, it makes so much sense that the scientists mucking around with Demogorgons and Mind Flayers and other inter-dimensional monsters would set off some type of nuclear disaster. It's basically the plot of all Godzilla movies that nuclear testing equals giant monsters. (Millie Bobby Brown, this year's Godzilla whisperer, should know.)
We have to wait to find out if Gamer_Nation is correct. A long time, most likely. But, until then, it might not hurt to brush up on your Russian and refresh your memory about what happened in Chernobyl.
The creators say that a fourth season would answer your burning questions from the end of Stranger Things 3.
If you finished the third season with your hand scratching your head, you're not alone — and answers are on their way, “Certainly season three ends with several plot strands that are separate from each other,” executive producer Shawn Levy tells Entertainment Weekly. “I think we’ll see them all explored.”
In the same Entertainment Weekly interview, Ross Duffer confirms: "We’re pretty excited about where it’s potentially going to go. It’s going to feel very different than this season. But I think that’s the right thing to do and I think it’ll be exciting.”
The Duffers reiterated Ross's thoughts in their intro to the trailer. "Season 4 is shaping up to be the biggest and most frightening season yet, and we cannot wait for everyone to see more," they write. "In the meantime — pray for the American."
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