“Stranger Things” is finally set to return to Netflix next month. And with it comes some major revelations.
Creators and showrunners Matt and Ross Duffer took part in the Deadline Contenders TV panel over the weekend, where they shared some new details about the hotly anticipated fourth season. (Season 3 premiered way back on July 4, 2019.)
They referred to the news season as their “’Game of Thrones’ season.” “We kind of jokingly call it our ‘Game of Thrones’ season because it’s so spread out. So I think that’s what’s unique or most unique about the season,” Matt Duffer said during the panel. He said that the season will be split between three storylines/locations – Joyce and the Byers kids in California (“we’ve always wanted to have that like ‘E.T’.-esque suburb aesthetic”), Hopper in Russia and the rest of the kids back in Hawkins. “We have these three storylines, are all connected and kind of interwoven together, but it’s just very different tones,” Matt Duffer said.
And if you are getting itchy for answers about the exact nature of the Upside Down and why so many have tried (and died) trying to capture the supernatural force inside of it, the Duffers promise that those answers are coming. Ross Duffer referred to the supersized nature of the season (they promised no episode would be shorter than a full hour), and said that part of the reason for it was, “For us really what it’s about is revelations, in that we really wanted to start giving the audience some answers.”
When the Duffer Brothers were doing Season 1, they submitted a 20-page document to Netflix detailing the ins and outs of the Upside Down. They’ve used bits of that document throughout the first three seasons but now it’s time (with one additional season to go) to get into it. “This season, we really wanted to really get into it and [revealing] some of those answers,” Ross Duffer said. “But to do that properly, we needed time, so it just became bigger and bigger.”
The first batch of “Stranger Things 4” episodes debuts on May 27, with the second batch dropping July 1.