The fourth season of “Stranger Things” has drawn much chatter, with a big part of it being about the super-sized runtime of many of the episodes.
This led to a season that clocks in around 80% longer than the more regular-sized third season – clocking in at about 13 hours as opposed to the 7.5-hour runtime of the third, and the longer runtime has led to some criticism of the show.
However, creators Matt and Ross Duffer tell Collider this won’t be the case for the fifth and final season of the series. Whilst still longer than the earlier seasons, the plan is to keep it closer to the ten-hour mark. Matt Duffer says:
“We thought Season 4 was going to be eight [episodes], and they were going to be regular length. So if you had interviewed us before four, that’s what I would’ve said. I think we’re aiming for eight again. We don’t want it to be 13 hours. We’re aiming for more like 10 hours or something. I think it’s going to be longer than Season 1 because we just have so much to wrap up, but I don’t think it’s going to be as long as Season 4.”
Ross Duffer adds that story structural changes will partly account for the difference in run time:
“This season, for instance, it was two hours before our characters even realized the monster was killing people in Hawkins. They know what the threat is now, and so that will help speed it up. We want to give the characters their moments and a lot of these characters have been evolving over the course of these four seasons, and so it’ll be five seasons of them. We want to make sure that they all land in a way that we all feel good about.”
The pair confirm they’re taking a vacation in July and then the writer’s room for the season will commence in August. The pair previously admitted the fifth season has already been outlined which means the scripts still need writing.
One thing they’re very happy to confirm to Happy Sad Confused though is the final season will take place entirely in Hawkins and will see some of the character pairings from the first season return:
“We wanna go back to a lot of the things we did in season 1. A lot of the original groupings and pairings that we had in season 1 – there’s something nice about coming full circle.”
They also tell that podcast they’re happy to pass the baton on for the upcoming spin-off series. Matt Duffer says:
“The idea, ultimately, is to pass the baton to someone else, someone who’s hopefully really talented and passionate. Even the idea of Ross and I, say, doing a pilot and leaving it, it just feels silly to me. You really need to be there from the beginning to end. I think we need to find a partner to help us with that.”
The second volume of the fourth season launched on Friday on Netflix, while the fifth and final season isn’t likely to arrive for some time yet.
