After many delays and multiple years of waiting, season 4 of Netflix's Stranger Things finally made its way to the streaming platform, with the first half of the season premiering on May 27th and the second half on July 1st. The new season didn’t only present a new bad guy, but also it was substantially longer than ever before.
The fourth season of Stranger Things had a nine-episode duration, which is on-brand with the show's past seasons. However, the runtimes of the episodes are more lengthy in comparison. The episodes in the two-part season fall around the 90-minute mark, and the Stranger Things 4 finale clocks in at 2 hours and 20 minutes long.
The length of these episodes received mixed reviews from fans, but the Duffer Brothers have made it clear that in Stranger Things' fifth season, the episode lengths will be trimmed slightly. They told Collider's Steve Weintraub, “We thought Season 4 was going to be eight (episodes), and they were going to be regular length. So if you had interviewed us before four, that's what I would've said. I think we're aiming for eight again. We don't want it to be 13 hours.” They went on to add, “We're aiming for more like 10 hours or something. I think it's going to be longer than Season 1 because we just have so much to wrap up, but I don't think it's going to be as long as Season 4."
Ross Duffer delved deeper into why the length would change, explaining that since the Stranger Things characters already know the bad guy, things will move faster on screen. “This season, for instance, it was two hours before our characters even realized the monster was killing people in Hawkins," he explained. "They know what the threat is now, and so that will help speed it up."
Throughout Stranger Things season four, the teens are seen searching all over town as they try to find the culprit behind a bunch of random murders of people in their town, Hawkins. However, with the threat already known as the gang heads into Stranger Things season 5, this allows for the show to be a smoother binge-watch for the show's fans, since there will be no journey to discover who’s attempting to bring down the residents of Hawkins.
Stranger Things season 4 is now available on Netflix.
Source: Collider