It’s been over a year since Netflix subscribers (and people who are friends with Netflix subscribers willing to share their passwords) got to enjoy the second season of Stranger Things, the show about a bunch of kids, a police officer and Winona Ryder battling inter-dimensional nightmare creatures in the small town of Hawkins, Indiana. According to cast member David Harbour (Sheriff Jim Hopper), filming on the third season has finally wrapped, with new episodes landing in the summer of 2019. Backing him up is breakout star Millie Bobby Brown, who plays the tweenage telekinetic Eleven. She posted an emotional farewell to her Instagram Stories, as well as a couple more general “We’re done” messages:
With sendoffs like that, fans would be forgiven for wondering if the cast hadn’t just shot the series finale, but Harbour says the series has always been planned to last longer than that. “We’re either going to season 4 or season 5,” he told CNET. “It’s still being debated. I do know the arc of the story, though. This was something that I discussed with the Duffer brothers right from day one.”
"I know somewhat a lot of Hopper’s place in that story because the more you can know about the end of your story, the more you can set up. I feel with acting you can sort of see a character make certain choices and you can feel what is behind it. As you see the end of the story, you’ll start to feel why certain characters behaved certain ways. I think that stuff’s really important, like knowing where your character’s going.A lot of times you don’t get that in TV. But the great thing about this is that we knew what season 1 was, and we had ideas about if it extended — because we didn’t know we’d get picked up — but if it extended, what the end of the actual thing would be. Like Star Wars, Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi have an arc to them. I think Stranger Things, be it season 4 or season 5, has an arc to it that I understand.I feel very proud of that because we’re not going to get lost in our story and leave these strands. We’re going to tie things up."
The underlines are mine, FYI.
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It’s always good to hear that a series has an endpoint in mind, rather than making things up as it goes. As show get more ambitious, that kind of long-form planning is becoming more common. Not for the first time, I can’t help but think of the effect that HBO’s Game of Thrones has had on the industry; that show tells one long story, with the showrunners getting worried over how to pull off the ending they had in mind as early as the third season.
Anyway, in addition to a third go-round as Sheriff Hopper, in 2019, Harbour will also star in a reboot of the Hellboy franchise, playing the lead character.
Who saw that coming, huh?
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h/t PEOPLE