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After almost two years away, Stranger Things has finally come back into our lives. Eleven and the gang made their long awaited return to Hawkins for season 3 of Netflix’s sci-fi smash hit, and it was well worth the wait.
If you haven’t watched it yet, it’s time for you to invest in some serious telly time. But if, like us, you’ve already binged the entirety of the latest season, you’ll be scouting around for anything you can find out about future episodes of the show. Thankfully it looks like there’s going to be a fourth season of the sci-fi smash, so here’s everything we know about it so far.
What’s the latest news?
- Production resumes after the coronavirus pandemic.
- Stranger Things‘ writing team teases possible release date
- The first episode of season four has been confirmed as Chapter Four: The Hellfire Club. Writers The Duffer Brothers shared the first page of the script with the caption: “Looking for new members… are you in?
- Four new characters are reportedly being recruited for the new season
- The Duffer Brothers have shared a series of cryptic tweets about Season 4
- Eagle-eyed fans believe that filming has begun on Stranger Things 4
- Show’s organisers admit that they aren’t sure of Hopper’s fate
- Season 4 officially confirmed, teaser clip shared
See below for more information on the above…
Will there be a fourth season of Stranger Things on Netflix?
Yes! The renewal was confirmed in September 2019 on the official Stranger Things Twitter account.
A short video shows the series logo embedded in what appears to be the show’s alternative universe, the Upside Down, however on-screen text reads at the end: “we’re not in hawkins anymore”.
we're not in hawkins anymore pic.twitter.com/Y4hayuPKvu
— Stranger Things (@Stranger_Things) September 30, 2019
No official release date nor details of returning cast have been announced.
Netflix has also signed the show’s creators Matt and Russ Duffer (aka The Duffer Brothers) to a multi-year film and series overall deal.
In the past Ross Duffer said he thinks Stranger Things will be a four-season show, telling Variety, “We’re thinking it will be a four-season thing and then out.”
In response to the comments, the show’s executive producer Shawn Levy told Entertainment Weekly: “Hearts were heard breaking in Netflix headquarters when the Brothers made four seasons sound like an official end, and I was suddenly getting phone calls from our actors’ agents…the truth is we’re definitely going four seasons and there’s very much the possibility of a fifth. Beyond that, it becomes I think very unlikely.”
So basically – there’s definitely be a fourth season, and maybe even a fifth to follow it. Result!
When will Stranger Things season be released on Netflix?
There’s currently no release date for the next season but given that there was a 20-month gap between season two and three, we may not be returning to Hawkins until 2021 (and the teaser clip – see above – means we may not even see Hawkins again).
One fan on Reddit reckons they’ve figured out when season 4 will premiere – and it’s a theory based on the drawings seen in Will’s room during the Netflix season 3 set tour, which you can see below.
The drawing of a prisoner seen at 2:59 in the above video – which the fan reckons is of Hopper – has the number 403-X on the uniform. That number is the same as that of the room in the hospital where Nancy visited Mrs. Driscoll. Could 403 be an oh-so-subtle reference to the release date of season 4, then? The Reddit fan certainly thinks so, guessing that season 4 will be released on April 3, 2020.
And wait – there’s more. A release date of April 3 would fit nicely with season 4 apparently being set in 1986, the year of the Chernobyl disaster – playing to an existing fan theory that the events of Stranger Things will either affect or be effected by those in Chernobyl in the next season. An interesting theory, no?
The show’s writing team added to speculation that season 4 will drop in 2020 by posting a cryptic meme on their official Twitter account.
Writing a simple “2020” accompanied by “we’re not in Hawkins anymore”, it could go some way to suggest that the new episodes will be with us before the end of 2020.
┏━━┓┏━━┓┏━━┓┏━━┓
┗━┓┃┃┏┓┃┗━┓┃┃┏┓┃
┏━┛┃┃┃┃┃┏━┛┃┃┃┃┃
we’re not in hawkins anymore
┃┏━┛┃┃┃┃┃┏━┛┃┃┃┃
┃┗━┓┃┗┛┃┃┗━┓┃┗┛┃
┗━━┛┗━━┛┗━━┛┗━━┛— stranger writers (@strangerwriters) December 31, 2019
Is there a Stranger Things season 4 trailer yet?
Not yet – and probably not for a while.
For season 3 the first “teaser” trailer was revealed almost a year before the show was finally released on July 4, 2019, and the first official trailer for the show was released a few months before in March, 2019. Given we don’t have a release date for the series yet, it could be a while before we get a glimpse at the next season. Basically, we’re all going to have to wait.
Has filming begun yet?
Yes! Production has resumed on the fourth season of Stranger Things, after coronavirus forced the show to shut down earlier this year.
The early stages of the show’s return had started in February, although filming was suspended in mid-March when the pandemic began to take hold across the globe.
Posting on Twitter, Netflix shared a cryptic photo of a clapperboard to confirm the start of production. “Today in Hawkins”, they wrote alongside the snap.
meanwhile in the upside down… pic.twitter.com/BtPlMjy0pS
— Stranger Things (@Stranger_Things) October 1, 2020
— stranger writers (@strangerwriters) October 1, 2020
Meanwhile, a separate photo from the show’s writers room revealed that a pep rally will take place during the show – with stars including Natalia Dyer and Gaten Matarazzo previously spotted on a school set.
It is yet to be confirmed when season 4 will take place, but each season was set a year after the last, meaning it is likely to be in 1986.
Who’s going to be in the cast for Stranger Things season 4?
We can expect most of the main cast to return, so Winona Ryder (Joyce Byers), Finn Wolfhard (Mike Wheeler), Millie Bobby Brown (Eleven), Gaten Matarazzo (Dustin Henderson), Caleb McLaughlin (Lucas Sinclair), Natalia Dyer (Nancy Wheeler), Noah Schnapp (Will Byers), Sadie Sink (Max Mayfield), Maya Hawke (Robin) and Charlie Heaton (Jonathan Byers).
However season 3 saw some major characters leave the show. Dacre Montgomery, who plays Billy, won’t be returning as his character died sacrificing himself to save Hawkins. And we also saw the tragic death of Hawkins’ chief of police Hopper, so we may be David Harbour-less in the next instalment.
In a new interview with Entertainment Weekly, Caleb McLaughlin has cast doubt over the future of the show, and its cast in particular.
“It’s all up to [the show’s creators] Duffers and the writers if they want to keep going,” Lucas’ actor says. “Maybe they want to stop now. Maybe they don’t want to give anyone another season. Maybe they just want to leave you guys hanging like that.
“I talk to people about this all the time, we can literally leave you guys hanging on the Upside Down. No one really knows what the Upside Down is, we just know what comes from it, like Demagorgons and like the Mind Flayer, but the Upside Down is an alternate dimension of our world. Our world is so big so there’s more than just Demadogs, and Demagorgons and Mind Flayers, so no one really knows.”
Maya Hawke has also been talking to the press about her hopes for Season 4, and where she can see her character Robin going.
Talking to Consequence of Sound, Hawke said: “Robin evolved a lot as we filmed the season. I think the Duffer brothers take a lot of inspiration from their actors, so the better the brothers got to know me, the more the character changed. But you would have to ask the brothers about that.
“Robin sees herself as an under-the-radar big fish in a small pond. She is really driven and works really hard at school, because she knows someday, she’ll make it out of Hawkins and she wants to be ready.
Speaking about her hopes for Robin in season 4, Hawke said: “I wanna see her at the video store. So many
of the great minds of the ‘80s and ‘80s filmmakers and creatives started out working in video stores, and as far as I know, that environment hasn’t really been explored on TV. I think that would be really fun.”
Andrey Ivchenko, who played the part of Terminator-style villain Grigori, has also hinted that he could return for season 4. Whilst his character was seemingly killed off in the final episode of season 3, he revealed at the San Diego Comic-Con that a return could be possible.
He said: “It’s sci-fi, you know, so things can happen…For now, what I know is he’s dead. But who knows?”
Sources have also confirmed to TVLine exclusively that the show’s creators the Duffer Brothers are looking to cast four new male characters for season 4.
Three of the new characters are teenagers and one is an adult. The piece describes the new teenage characters as “a metalhead”, “an entitled jock” and a character that sounds an awful lot like the twin of Fast Times at Ridgemont High stoner Jeff Spicoli”.
The adult, meanwhile, looks to be pivotal in the Russian storyline that’s set to unfold in the new season.
What will happen in season 4 of Stranger Things?
When we left Hawkins we saw Joyce and her sons Will and Jonathan, along with Eleven, packing up their home into a removal van, ready to move away. This means Season 4 might see the gang separated, and the show move away from Hawkins for the first time.
Jonathan and Nancy reconciled after tensions throughout the third season, so could we see them attempting a long-distance relationship in the future?
In a new interview with Entertainment Weekly, creators the Duffer brothers have teased more about the “portals” which may take the characters out of Hawkins, Indiana, into different worlds.
“We have the big broad strokes,” Ross said. “It’s just now about filling in those lines in the details. We’re pretty excited about where it’s potentially going to go. Again, like we said, it’s going to feel very different than this season. But I think that’s the right thing to do and I think it’ll be exciting.”
Matt added: “I think the biggest thing that’s going to happen is it’s going to open up a little bit, not necessarily in terms of scale [or] in terms of special effects…but open up in terms of allowing portals into areas outside of Hawkins.”
He continued: “Assuming there’s a season 4, obviously the question of who that American is in that cell and then also what they’re doing with the Demogorgon, is a tease…That’s obviously going to play a huge role in a potential season four.”
More fan theories have also been popping up about what’s set to go down in our fourth trip to Hawkins. One Reddit user has some pretty big ideas about the next edition of the show, hinting that a huge nuclear disaster is set to be at the forefront of the plot.
Specifically, they believe that Eleven will spark the Chernobyl power plant disaster of 1986. The theory comes from the fact that Season 3 drew to a close in October 1985, just six months before the April disaster in the following year. It also links together with the Russian spies introduced in the most recent season, with the new theory believing that the disaster could even be fabricated in an attempt to cover up a battle between Eleven and the spies.
The possibility of such a storyline is backed by the Russians using reactors of a similar kind to open gateways in Season 3. It also comes back to the idea that Chief Jim Hopper isn’t actually dead, and is “the American” mentioned in Season 3’s mid-credits sequence.
There have also been rumblings amongst fans of something called The Winona Collision. It revolves around the possibility of casting a body double for Winona Ryder’s character, as the show’s setting in the ’80s causes some headaches when contrasted against real life timelines from the past.
“It’s a tough one because I’d love to [make episodes] faster than we do, but the reality is that our show is singular because we are unusually small as a creative team,” the show’s executive producer Shawn Levy told Mashable.
“We want to control every detail of every episode ourselves and that level of micromanagement, that level of authorship, and detail-oriented creativity, it simply takes more time.”
“We’re definitely trying to make the show as quickly as we can. We’re not in control of those things, but we don’t want to bullshit about those things.”
The Duffer brothers meanwhile have released a series of cryptic tweets (October 17), with each seemingly a clue to something that could be happening in the upcoming new season. You can see the tweets below:
anyway I think you’ll—— sorry I couldn’t get it done—— but you mean so—— and it’s been—— hope this is——— last until—— love—— pic.twitter.com/DjRNXbrlKC
— stranger writers (@strangerwriters) October 17, 2019
this is… not about a couple. https://t.co/mWsKNdpMUC
— stranger writers (@strangerwriters) October 17, 2019
it is… not about hopper.
— stranger writers (@strangerwriters) October 17, 2019
What are the episode titles for season four?
So far, we only know that the first episode will be called Chapter One: The Hellfire Club. Writers The Duffer Brothers shared the cover of the script with the caption: “Looking for new members… are you in?”
looking for new members… are you in? pic.twitter.com/P1xAWNUPss
— stranger writers (@strangerwriters) November 7, 2019
What about Eleven’s powers, is she going to get those back?
We’ll have to wait and see. At the end of season three Eleven loses her powers after battling with the Mind Flayer, and there was no sign at the end that these powers would return. Mike was confident they would – but time will tell on whether she gets them back.
And what about this theory that Hopper isn’t really dead? Could he return for Stranger Things season 4?
In the season finale Joyce Byers (Winona Ryder) blows up the Gate to the Upside Down in order to save Hawkins, but in the process Hopper was killed by a shock wave of energy. However we don’t actually see Hopper die, and so theories are circulating about him not actually being dead.
These rumours are centred on a post-credits scene shown after the last episode of season three. In it, we’re taken to a military building in Kamchatka, Russia, where a Russian soldier goes to unlock a cell door but is told “No. Not the American”. He then opens another cell door, and takes a prisoner to be eaten by a Demogorgon. So who is “the American”, and could it be Hopper?
David Harbour has also expressed his hopes that Hopper didn’t die at the end of the last season. When asked by Entertainment Tonight about this theory he said: “I mean, I have no idea! [Laughs] I have no idea! I mean that, of course, is my hope too. It seems pretty crazy though.
“You know, that machine went off and blew up and Hopper seemed to be trapped there. He did glance around a little bit, but he seemed to be trapped and the machine exploded.”
In a new interview on Late Night With Seth Meyers, Harbour spoke of Hopper’s fate, and didn’t seem to hold out much hope that he’s still alive, saying: “I always knew that Hopper had to make a sacrifice. He’s a jerk and like, he also needs to, he needs to pay for that in some way.
“So I thought he’d make this sacrifice and then the script came out and, spoiler alert like if you don’t want to know about this stuff… and you know the post credit scene there’s this thing where it’s the American and I was like, ‘Oh, clearly I’m the American.’”
Despite this, he then decided to FaceTime the show’s creators, the Duffer brothers, who responded by saying they were “still figuring it out”. Is Hopper still alive?
Did Season 3 leave behind any Easter Eggs hinting at the storyline for Season 4?
Well, we’re glad you asked – yes!
Ever-eager Stranger Things fans have discovered another Easter Egg buried in Season 3, and it’s one they believe holds hints as to an unexplained death in the season, and potential ramifications for Season 4.
During a scene in Season 3, the phone number of Murray Bauman – an associate of police chief Hopper who is renowned for investigating conspiracy theories – is read aloud on screen.
Fans have now been calling the number – 618-625-8313 – and finding a message Bauman left for Joyce Byers (Winona Ryder) after Hopper was presumed dead in the finale of Season 3.
The message reads: “Hi, you have reached the residence of Murray Bauman. Mom, if this is you, please hang up and call me between the hours of 5 and 6pm as previously discussed, okay? If this is Joyce: Joyce, thank you for calling, I have been trying to reach you. I have an update. It’s about… well, it’s probably best if we speak in person. It’s not good or bad, but it’s something.”
There’s still much confusion among fans as to whether Hopper actually did die in the Season 3 finale (see above), and fans believe that this message is related to the police chief. Team that with another fan theory that Hopper is still alive after being taken away by Russian soliders at the end of Season 3, and Russian prison guards referring to an unidentified “American”, and this new message is getting fans very excited.
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