Millie Bobby Brown, Finn Wolfhard, and Noah Schnapp stranger things 4 (Photo: Netflix)
Prepare yourself for one last battle in the Upside Down, because stranger things The children (turned full grown young adults) are going out of their way to retaliate. Early 2022 – a few months ahead stranger things 4 Debuts Its Supersized, Two-Part Season on Netflix – Creators Matt and Ross Duffer Announced stranger things Season 5 will be the show’s last, as they reach the natural conclusion of the story told in 2016.
Unfortunately for fans, it hasn’t been easy for the Duffer brothers to translate their creative vision for the concluding chapter to the screen. Production on Season 5 was delayed for several months due to a strike by the Writers Guild of America and SAG-AFTRA, but now both unions have reached historic deals with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which represents Hollywood studios. If talks have been held, then preparations are on to start it again. ,
There are still technical hurdles to overcome: stranger things 4 Requires “thousands of visual effects shots” duffers revealedAnd given the looming conflict between the Hawkins crew and Vecna (Jamie Campbell Bower) in the Upside Down, it’s possible that Season 5 will require an equally, if not more, great effort from the show’s talented VFX artists.
While the wait between seasons is growing, Netflix and the show’s writers, producers, and stars have attempted to provide information about the final season. We’ll continue to update this story as new details emerge, but for now, here’s everything we know about the final season so far stranger things Season 5:
when will it happen stranger things Season 5 premiere?
Netflix and the Duffer brothers have not yet announced a premiere date stranger things Season 5 – And given that production is just beginning, this information will likely remain a secret for months.
That said, it’s possible to do some detective work and predict when the final season will arrive on Netflix. On November 10, star David Harbor said that now that the SAG-AFTRA strike is over, his first order of business is to work on the sci-fi epic. “We had to film the last season of stranger things, Don’t we?” he told Variety on the red carpet for the BoxLunch Gala celebrating Feeding America. “I should be there in a few days. We’ve got to move – we’re late.”
Typically, filming of the previous season has lasted about seven months (although the crew spent 12 months producing Season 4), with the premiere arriving six months to a year later. By that logic, stranger things Season 5 will likely arrive before the end of 2024, although it could be delayed to 2025 if production runs longer.
how many episodes will there be stranger things‘The final season?
All signs are pointing towards an eight-episode final season. in August 2022 stranger things The author, who maintains a fairly active presence on Twitter/X, shared a photo Of a whiteboard breaking down the seasons, with columns labeled for episodes 1 through 8. Of course, something could have changed in the year-plus since his initial post, but an eight-episode order would be in line with previous seasons, all of which have come in eight or nine installments.
On November 6, 2022 (also known as). stranger things Day, which commemorates the disappearance of Will Byers in 1983), the show’s official account revealed that Episode 1 is written by the Duffer brothers and titled “Chapter One: The Crawl”. stranger things Day 2023 brings additional information about “The Crawl”, which begins under the cover of darkness.
#strangersday pic.twitter.com/sREWwbHkdo
– Stranger Things (@Stranger_Things) 7 November 2023
However, there is one major difference between seasons 4 and 5: the final season’s episodes are expected to be significantly shorter than the final episodes, averaging 80 to 90 minutes (hereafter two and a half hours). ending). “(Season 4), if you look at it, it’s about a two-hour ramp up before our kids actually get caught up in a supernatural mystery. You get to know them, you see them in their lives, they’re struggling. with adjusting to high school and so on. Steve’s trying to find a date, all that,” Matt Duffer said on Josh Horowitz happy sad confused Podcast in July 2022. “Obviously none of that is going to happen in the first two episodes (of season 5). For the first time, we don’t end things at the end of season four.”
there will be an exception stranger things‘ series finale, about which Duffer said, “It’s going to be very long.” He added, “It’s going to be return of the king-ish, like, with eight endings.”
where did stranger things Leave at the end of Season 4?
stranger things Season 4 featured a major confrontation between Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) and her friends and Vecna, the lesbian, psychotic entity who haunts Hawkins, but first, it offered some much-needed background on the show’s big bad. Volume 1 reveals that Vecna, born Henry Creel, was Subject 001 in Dr. Brenner’s (Matthew Modine) child experiment, but when Eleven discovered his true nature, she effectively killed him. Turned it upside down. Once there, Henry absorbed the evil forces around him and transformed into Vecna, and he spent several years plotting his revenge.
By Season 4, Vecna has become powerful enough to travel to Hawkins and capture some of its inhabitants, including Max (Sadie Sink) and Nancy Wheeler (Natalia Dyer), but in Volume 2, the teenagers defeat her on their own. defeated. game. Using Max as bait to lure Vecna out of hiding, the young heroes break into her house in the Upside Down and launch a coordinated attack, seriously injuring, but not killing, the monster. . For a brief moment, it seems as if Max has paid the ultimate price for his sacrifice, but thanks to Eleven’s newfound ability to bring people back from the dead (it was all a stirring montage of her friendship with Max ), he lives to see another day—and another battle with Vecna.
What is stranger things About Season 5?
Season 4’s cliffhanger ending gives fans a clear hint as to where stranger things Is at its last stop. The main story of Season 5 will revolve around the battle with Vecna, but defeating her will require these characters – teens and adults – to come together in ways they never thought possible.
According to the Duffer brothers, now that Hopper (Harbor) and Eleven have been rescued, the final season will take place primarily in Hawkins, which will allow the show to “reexplore some of the dynamics of Season 1, except without this grandiose ” Scale,” he told Collider in July 2022. However, there will also be a lot of time spent in the alternate dimension, with Vecna breaking the barrier between Hawkins and the Upside Down, so fans should expect plenty of supernatural action, too.
Like Season 1, it looks like Will Byers (Noah Schnapp) will continue to be a major point of connection between the two worlds. In the wake of the Season 4 finale, Matt Duffer revealed, “Will is going to be a big part and focus, really that’s all I can say about Season 5, about his journey. We’ll see him coming of age. “Which has been challenging for a number of reasons, some of which are supernatural. But you’re starting to see him coming into his own.” For his part, Schnapp has confirmed that “It’s 100% clear that (Will) is gay and he loves Mike,” played by Finn Wolfhard. , and he hopes the final season will include “a coming-of-age scene” and more about their “connection to the Mind Flayer and how it fits into the world.”
Other character arcs in the final season will also come “full circle”, Ross Duffer said in the same interview regarding Will’s coming-of-age journey, specifically this love triangle between Nancy, Steve (Joe Carey), and Jonathan. Is related to. (Charlie Heaton). He explained, “The characters may have moved on, like in Will’s case, but that journey isn’t over yet.” “That’s all going to play a big role as we try to get this thing done next season.”
Whatever happens, audiences should be prepared for an emotional ending. Speaking with TheWrap, Ross Duffer recalled the incident when he and Matt first revealed stranger things‘Season 5 met with tears by Netflix executives. He said, “It was hard. That’s the end of the story. I saw officers crying that I had never seen cry before and it was wild.” “And it doesn’t just have to do with the story, but the fact that oh my God, this is the thing that has defined the lives of so many of our people, these Netflix people who have been with us from the beginning, it’s been seven years now , and it’s hard to imagine an end to the journey.”
Who’s new to stranger things 5 mold?
while most stranger things While the cast is expected to return for the show’s final season — including Millie Bobby Brown, Finn Wolfhard, Gaten Matarazzo, Caleb McLaughlin and Maya Hawke — there’s one cast member who won’t be present for the final battle: Joseph Quinn, whose character is Eddie. Munson sacrifices himself to save the city from the hordes of rebels. Unlike Max, Eddie is not coming back from the dead, although the Duffers have said that his sacrifice will have a “huge impact” on the rest of the group.
Quinn’s departure will leave a Metallica-fan-sized hole in the show, but she will be replaced by another brave soul. In June 2023, Netflix announced that terminator Alumnus Linda Hamilton is joining the cast for season 5. Details about Hamilton’s role are still under wraps, but as a fan of the show, the actor is already well versed in stranger things Knowledge. “I don’t know how to be a fangirl and an actress at the same time,” Hamilton said at the time of the announcement. “I’m going to work on that.”
does stranger things Play connect with show?
stranger things Season 5 may still be months (if not years) away, but those desperate to return to Hawkins are in luck: the long-awaited stage play, Stranger Things: First ShadowIt opened in London’s West End in December 2023. Conceived as a prequel to the Netflix series, the drama follows a young Henry Creel (Louis McCartney) as his family arrives in a small Indiana town in 1959 in search of a fresh start. There, Henry meets young versions of several familiar characters, including Hopper (Oscar Lloyd Jr.), Joyce (Isabella Pappas), and Dr. Brenner (Patrick Viall), as well as newcomer Patty Newby (Elena Karuna Williams) , with whom Henry develops a romance.
Whereas first shadow Conceived as an original, standalone story, it contains “so many Easter eggs” about Henry’s journey to becoming Vecna and the origins of the Upside Down, playwright Kate Trefry said in a featurette released in November 2023. . stranger things day, of course). Netflix also teased that “the captivating new adventure will take you back to the beginning stranger things story – and may be the key to the ending,” so die-hard fans should get their tickets sooner rather than later.
stranger things Seasons 1-4 are streaming on Netflix. Join the discussion about the show on our forums.
Claire Spielberg Lustig is the senior editor of Primetimers and a scholar of The View. Follow him on Twitter @c_spellberg,