They say every ending has a beginning but with the end being so close for our favourite teen show, it’s only getting scarier for hopes to remain intact. As we near the end of the fourth season, it’s a looming feeling to know that the fifth will be the last and alas, after that there’s no beginning to look forward to.
Unlike its previous season, the fourth season of Netflix’s Stranger Things has surprised and scared fans alike both in tone and the length of the show’s episodes. While fans had one and a half month to recover and process all that happened in the first volume, it’s time to give in with the finale– one of the Volume 2 episodes–launched this morning.
The Duffer brothers, Matt and Ross Duffer, showmakers of the teen thriller, shared that they had no choice but to take horror up a notch and go into a detailed synopsis— and there are reasons for it.
In an interview for Variety, the brother pair revealed that the essential framework of the teen thriller involving four distinct storyline warranted longer runtimes for its episodes, “If you look at one of the episodes — like, you couldn’t cut it out 15 minutes early,” Matt said.
Citing the finale as an example, Ross added, “Reel one is build-up dread. Reel two is action, chaos. And then, reel three is our traditional coda, come down after all of that. You didn’t really want to break it after just the build-up. It wouldn’t feel like a satisfying episode. So, at a certain point we just said, ‘Well, it’s just a mega episode.’ If someone wants to pause it, they can!”
Talking about how Netflix came on board with such unconventionally larger episodes with heavy build ups, given the money it requires, Matt said that, “We have a really great relationship with Netflix, where everybody wants the show to be successful for them.”
Reportedly, each episode costed them $30 million to get on board with the streaming platform. “The goal for us, though, is whatever the money ends up being, it needs to be going on on-screen,” added Ross Duffer. “Even though it was a long shoot, every one of those days was jam-packed — we’re moving really fast.”
Moving on to Will’s (Noah Schnapp) birthday mistake in episode of the series’ second installment, they revealed that it’s likely that the show will head to “George Lucas”--- meaning they’ll go back and alter what’s already on screen. For context, in an earlier interview with the same publication, they posited a contingency in which they might just go back and change the Season 2 episode in which Joyce (Winona Ryder) mentioned the date.
Matt, revealing what can be counted as a spoiler, added, that they have considered making Will’s new birthday May 22, “because ‘May’ can fit in Winona’s mouth” in that Season 2 episode being referenced. “So that would be us George Lucas-ing the situation.” Gross and exciting, nothing fits better than this for how the season is going so far.
They elaborated on that dilemma and said that not having any of the characters — including Joyce, his own mother! — remember that it was Will’s birthday is just too awful to contemplate. “It’s too sad!” Matt said. “And it doesn’t make any narrative sense. But we were talking about it yesterday, and I think we’re going to George Lucas that.”
While you may think of the showrunners cheating on fans with the George Lucas trick, it turns out that it has happened many a times before this. “We have George Lucas’d things also that people don’t know about,” he continued, while declining to detail specific alterations from previous seasons.
Ross continued, “You do have the physical copies though, the Blu-rays and stuff — you’d have to compare.” It seems like fans have more homework to do to catch the many ways showmakers have deceived them in the past seasons.
As a matter of fact, Ross later slipped and revealed that they had even changed something from Volume 1 after it had already gone up on May 27. “Some of the visual effects,” said Ross. “It’s not, like, story, but you’re essentially patching in shots. Netflix is — I don’t think they’ve ever allowed people to patch on opening week and even weekend. And we said, ‘Well, why not?’ And he said, ‘Well, it makes us nervous.’ And we’re like, ‘Well, maybe we try it this time.’ And it turned out fine.”
While they didn’t respond to how worried fans should be about Steve’s life ahead in the show, Ross is glad that fans and team, together, has turned “‘George Lucas’ into a verb.”
Whatever happens in Volume 2, fans will witness it in the coming days, but from when the final season will be set to which new characters are likely to return to the fray, there are several things that have been teased about the last season, Stranger Things’ Season Five.
In an interview with Empire Magazine, Matt shared that he and his brother didn't intend to "reset" the show in the last season. "Usually at the end of a season, we tie things up with a nice bow, before a little tease that says, 'Hold on, something is unraveling.’”However, given that it's time to wrap up, they won’t have any unraveling to do anymore. "As we move into Season 5, we won't have to do that. There won't be a reset from where we finish this season."
Ross added that, "The ending is the hard thing. That's obviously the stressful thing. We really want to stick the landing.” Another interesting revelation to stoke up fans is that the showmakers intend to bring a time jump in the upcoming season. "I'm sure we will do a time jump. Ideally, we'd have shot [Seasons 4 and 5] back to back, but there was just no feasible way to do that.”
While we can’t say anything with surety about Eddie Munson’s (Joseph Quinn) character, we know that season four’s big, bad Vecna, portrayed by Jamie Campbell Bower is returning for sure.
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Campbell was adept at not giving away any spoilers, but he did say he is aware of his character's future: "Let me put it this way: I know about season five. Take from that what you will."
Stranger Things Season 4 Volume 2 landed on Netflix on Friday, July 1.
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