STRANGER THINGS Season 4 to run super-sized episodes

This Friday, Netflix is dropping the first part of the fourth and penultimate season of one of their biggest shows, Stranger Things. Netflix have confirmed they will be running the season in two chunks, with their longest episodes to date.

Debuting in 2016, Stranger Things opened in 1983 and saw a young girl with mysterious powers being rescued by a bunch of kids, who have their own problems with a missing friend and mysterious corporation which might or might not be up to no good. Heavily indebted to the likes of Spielberg, Lucas, Dante and Zemeckis, the series proved a huge hit with viewers old and young. Further seasons aired in 2017 and 2019. Stranger Things has historically been one of Netflix's biggest-performing shows, with an enormous long tail, cross-generational appeal and career-boosting kudos for many of its actors. Shows like Bridgerton and Squid Game have eclipsed it recently, but it's still one of the biggest feathers in Netflix's cap.

Season 4's production has been beset for problems due to the COVID pandemic, with repeated shutdowns, quarantines and delays to shooting. This has led to a three-year gap between seasons, something that has apparently severely concerned Netflix executives (who were already unhappy with the widening waits between seasons even before the pandemic). However, it does appear that creators/showrunners the Duffer Brothers are giving viewers maximum bang for their buck. They have split the nine-episode season into two parts, with seven episodes in the first part and two in the second. The two parts will be split by a month. The runtimes of the episodes will also be significantly longer than preceding seasons, as follows:

• Episode 1: 76 minutes
• Episode 2: 75 minutes
• Episode 3: 63 minutes
• Episode 4: 77 minutes
• Episode 5: 74 minutes
• Episode 6: 73 minutes
• Episode 7: 98 minutes
• Episode 8: 85 minutes
• Episode 9: 150 minutes

If Stranger Things was a typical network show airing 45-minute episodes, Season 4 would be 17 episodes long. Which is actually pretty good, with declining episode counts for modern shows being roundly criticised by some viewers (though applauded by others who don't want to see a comeback of the days of 22-episode network shows, where 15 of those episodes are pure filler).

Episodes 1-7 of Stranger Things will be released this Friday, 27 May. Episodes 8 and 9 will be released five weeks later, on 1 July.

A fifth and final season of Stranger Things has been commissioned.