The thrilling conclusion of the fourth season of “Stranger Things” hit Netflix last week, and many viewers already have one important question for the show’s creators.
When does the fifth season come out?
While that answer is unknown, it has been confirmed that “Stranger Things” will return for a fifth season.
Here’s everything we know about the next season of “Stranger Things.”
Will Season 5 of ‘Stranger Things’ be the last season?
Series creators the Duffer Brothers revealed in February that Season 5 will be the final chapter of the series, which premiered in 2016.
“Seven years ago, we planned out the complete story arc for ‘Stranger Things,’” the Duffer Brothers said in an open letter. “At the time, we predicted the story would last four to five seasons. It proved too large to tell in four, but — as you’ll soon see for yourselves — we are now hurtling toward our finale. Season 4 will be the penultimate season; season 5 will be the last.”
“There are still many more exciting stories to tell within the world of ‘Stranger Things,’” the creators continued. “New mysteries, new adventures, new unexpected heroes.”
Will there be a time jump in the fifth season of ‘Stranger Things’?
Many of the “Stranger Things” actors are several years older than the teenage characters they portray. Sadie Sink, for example, is a 20-year-old actress portraying Max Mayfield, who was 15 years old in Season 4.
It’s why many believe a time jump is necessary for the fifth season of the show.
And the Duffer Brothers recognize that. Ross Duffer — one half of the Duffer Brothers — told TV Line in June, “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,” he said.
It’s unclear how many years the show would move forward. Many viewers have speculated a fifth season could pick up when Mike Wheeler, Dustin Henderson, Lucas Sinclair, Eleven and Max are seniors in high school. In the fourth season, they were freshmen.
When will ‘Stranger Things’ resume filming?
Matt Duffer said in June they have not set a start date for filming of the fifth season, but noted “a lot of it is pretty well mapped out.”
“We learn a lot every time we make a (season),” Matt Duffer told TV Line. “We’ve learned a lot just working with all of our new actors and the ones we’ve worked with a long time over this year (making Season 4), so I’m sure it’ll change a little bit from that outline.”
This means, of course, a premiere date for Season 5 has not been announced.
But don’t expect to wait as long as the break in between Season 3 and 4. The third season was released on July 4, 2019, while the beginning of the fourth season premiered on May 27.
“Don’t hold us to it, but the gap 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 Duffers said in a May interview with Variety.
What else is known about the fifth season?
The fifth season will not shift to a weekly release, a Netflix executive confirmed in June to Variety.
“For the fans of ‘Stranger Things,’ this is how they’ve been watching that show, and I think to change that on them would be disappointing,” said Peter Friedlander, Netflix’s head of scripted series for U.S. and Canada. “To not give them exactly what they’ve been expecting — which is ‘Stranger Things’ is a seasonal experience, they go through that with them — I think that it would be an abrupt change for the member.”
And while the plot is being kept under wraps for now, it was enough to make Netflix executives cry, Ross Duffer told The Wrap.
“We do have an outline for Season 5 and we pitched it to Netflix and they really responded well to it,” Ross Duffer said. “I mean, it was hard. It’s the end of the story. I saw executives crying who I’ve never seen cry before and it was wild.”
Season 5, the Duffer Brothers said, is “just going to be pedal to the metal from the opening scene” without the “ramp up” of previous seasons, they said in their interview with The Wrap.
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