Stranger Things director on the pressure of season 5: "We've got to stick the landing"

After four immensely popular seasons on Netflix, long-time Stranger Things director Shawn Levy is feeling the pressure to deliver a satisfying endgame.

STRANGER THINGS. (L to R) Natalia Dyer as Nancy Wheeler, Charlie Heaton as Jonathan Byers, Finn Wolfhard as Mike Wheeler, Noah Schnapp as Will Byers, David Harbour as Jim Hopper, Winona Ryder as Joyce Byers, and Millie Bobby Brown as Eleven in STRANGER THINGS. Cr. Courtesy of Netflix © 2022
STRANGER THINGS. (L to R) Natalia Dyer as Nancy Wheeler, Charlie Heaton as Jonathan Byers, Finn Wolfhard as Mike Wheeler, Noah Schnapp as Will Byers, David Harbour as Jim Hopper, Winona Ryder as Joyce Byers, and Millie Bobby Brown as Eleven in STRANGER THINGS. Cr. Courtesy of Netflix © 2022

Since its premiere in 2016, Stranger Things has become one of the most popular shows in all of streaming, helping catapult Netflix to the summit of the Streaming Wars. Right now, the much-anticipated fifth and final season of the sci-fi series is in production, and we can expect it to air sometime in 2025.

Filming on the final season started in January and likely won't wrap until December at the earliest. The year-long production is a particularly grueling one, and the crew is feeling the pressure to deliver on the huge expectations. Take Shawn Levy, who's always directed episodes 3 and 4 of each season so far. But in season 5, he can only reveal that he's "doing a later episode." Perhaps the series finale...?

"We’ve got to stick the landing of every episode," Levy told Collider. "And we tried to stick the landing with the end of every season. So, you better believe we are all of us devoted to sticking the landing with the series finale."

So far, the series has managed to deliver excellent endings in each of its four seasons. Apparently, ending the story is something that creators Matt and Ross Duffer ardently work on perfecting. "If you look at any episode ofStranger Things, you can see that the Duffers have always been obsessed with, as they put it, sticking the landing."

Stranger Things 4 ended on a massive cliffhanger. It didn't really wrap anything up, and left fans with way more questions than answers. In the final moments, the dark Upside Down dimension began to spill into the town of Hawkins, painting the landscape with its lurid red atmosphere. Clearly, the war against Vecna is far from over.

Netflix has not set a release date for the fifth and final season of Stranger Things yet; it's still very much in the thick of production. Let's be patient!

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