Duffer Brothers Reveal “Stranger Things” Season 5 Finale Runtime and Secrets of the Upside Down
The final season of Stranger Things is set to arrive on Netflix at the end of this year, and fans are in for a dramatic conclusion. The fifth season will have eight episodes and will be released in three parts.
The first two volumes are scheduled for November 26 and December 25, with the series finale coming on December 31. The season is being produced by the Duffer Brothers, alongside Shawn Levy and Dan Cohen.
Most of the main cast will return, including Winona Ryder, David Harbour, Millie Bobby Brown, Finn Wolfhard, Gaten Matarazzo, Caleb McLaughlin, Noah Schnapp, Sadie Sink, Natalia Dyer, Charlie Heaton, Joe Keery, Maya Hawke, Brett Gelman, and Priah Ferguson. Amybeth McNulty, who appeared as a guest in the previous season, joins the main cast, and Linda Hamilton is a new addition.
The story picks up a year after the events of Season 4, in the fall of 1987. Hawkins is under military control, and the group is back together to stop Vecna, who has reopened rifts to the Upside Down. The military complicates their mission, especially for Eleven. With the anniversary of Will Byers’ disappearance approaching, the team faces one final battle against a deadly threat.
In a recent interview with Variety, the Duffer Brothers shared details about the final season’s structure. Most episodes are around an hour long, though Episode 4 is 83 minutes, and the finale runs “around two hours,” according to Matt Duffer. Ross Duffer added that the show would finally explain the Upside Down. “Every season would be like, ‘Should we talk about it?’ And we’d go, ‘No, let’s wait.’ And then finally, we’re like, ‘Well, we have to now!’”
Co-writer Dichter said the writers approached the season without limits. “Everything was on the table when we first started. We had the names of every character on a whiteboard, and it was like anything is possible for any of these characters. They could live or die. They could end up together…”
Trefry added, “Or not together. Especially as the show’s arc drew toward the final climax, the writers had to deliver enormous spectacle while not letting it devolve into a CG slimefest, where you don’t really care who’s doing what and why.”
The writers also focused on keeping the story grounded. “It’s never cynical. It’s never winking at you. It’s looking toward that core of innocence and how to maintain that as you grow older and are beset by all of the nightmares of the world,” Trefry said.
The finale went through many rewrites. “We went back over and over and over and over, dozens of times. They would start writing it, they’d come back. We’d blow it up, and we’d just rinse and repeat,” she explained.
Matt Duffer revealed that the ending was planned early on. “We knew roughly what the end scene was for years — it wasn’t something we had a strain to come up with. There were elements of it that were discussed for weeks, but the core idea of the ending, we had for a really long time.”
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