Stranger Things creators tease tear-jerking final season

It’s been a few months since season 4 of Stranger Things dropped on Netflix and the Upside Down spilled over into Hawkins, Indiana. Stranger Things creators Matt and Ross Duffer and their team of writers are already hard at work on the fifth and final season. They’ve been keeping relatively quiet about what fans can expect, but at a recent panel in Los Angeles the duo opened up about their pitch meeting, where they got “executives to cry.”

Netflix now knows how Stranger Things will end

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the Duffer Brothers were on hand to answer questions along with executive producer/director Shawn Levy, and actors Caleb McLaughlin (Lucas Sinclair), Joseph Quinn (Eddie Munson), Jamie Campbell Bower (One/Vecna), Priah Ferguson (Erica Sinclair), Eduardo Franco (Argyle) and Millie Bobby Brown (Eleven), who joined the event virtually.

“We turned in the first script a couple of weeks ago and we’re onto the second. It’s full steam ahead,” Ross Duffer told moderator Patton Oswalt. “I remember season 1 we were just amazed that Netflix was letting us do this at all, but season 2 was when we really, with the writers, we developed an overall plan and a backstory for all of this and make sure that, with the Upside Down, everything about what it was.”

Ross Duffer said that some of what they came up with was already getting revealed in season 4, “but we do have quite a bit more to get in. But just as important as the supernatural, we have so many characters now — most who are still living — and it’s important to wrap up those arcs. A lot of these characters have been growing since season 1 so it’s a balancing act between giving them time to complete their character arcs and also tying up loose ends and doing our final reveals.”

As things stand, very few people actually know what those final reveals are. But Duffers did finally have to spill the beans to Netflix. Matt Duffer recalled how he and his brother recently had a two-hour meeting with executives where they laid out the show’s final season in its entirety. “We did get our executives to cry, which I felt was a good sign that these executives were crying,” he said. “The only other times I’ve seen them cry were like budget meetings.”

Netflix executives cried when they heard the ending of Stranger Things

“Those were different tears,” joked executive producer and director Shawn Levy. “As a witness and having been in that two-hour pitch room and having read this first script — I’m paralyzed with fear that I’ll spoil anything but I will say the thing about these Duffer Brothers is that even though the show has gotten so famous and the characters have gotten so iconic and there’s so much about the ’80s and the supernatural and the genre, it’s about these people, it’s about these characters. Season 5 is already so clearly taking care of these stories of the characters because that’s always been the lifeblood of Stranger Things.”

Speaking of the ’80s, the audience wanted to know what movies, books and shows will influence the final season. Stranger Things has a history of taking cues from different sources each year. There’s a lot of Aliens in season 2, for instance, while A Nightmare on Elm Street and Hellraiser are clearly influences on season 4.

Ross Duffer teased that season 5 will be “a culmination of all of the seasons, so it’s sort of got a little bit from each, whereas before each season was so distinctly — 3, this is our big summer blockbuster season with our big monster; 4 was the psychological horror.”

"I think that what we’re trying to do is go back to the beginning a little bit in the tone of [season] 1, but scale-wise it’s more in line with what [season] four is. Hopefully it’s got a little bit of everything."

Stranger Things 4 is expected to begin production sometime next year, which means we’ll likely be waiting until 2024 to see it. Until then, the first four seasons are available to stream on Netflix.

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