Fans from all over the world have been whistling to themselves, wondering when the Netflix Original series Stranger Things (2016-present) season four will arrive. The previous three action-packed seasons had fans so wound up; the episodes deserved another watch before the season four premiere. 

Stranger Things is a sci-fi, horror and drama series that takes place in 1980s Indiana. The show features a group of middle-school-aged individuals who witness supernatural forces and the government’s secret, evil exploits. 

Season 4 is divided into two parts – or “volumes” – due to the script’s length. The first volume comes out on May 27, 2022 and the second comes out on July 1, 2022. 

In the new season, main characters Will Byers (Noah Schnapp), Dustin Henderson (Gaten Matarazzo), Mike Wheeler (Finn Wolfhard) and Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) are starting high school and must face numerous conflicts with their own adolescence, while dealing with dangerous, paranormal characters popping up. A reference to one of the upcoming episode names referring to evil wizard Vecna from the game Dungeons and Dragons. This will come into play with the characters joining the D&D club at the high school and could intertwine with their lives. 

“As much as it pains our viewers that it will have been so long, trust me, it pains Matt, Ross, and I more,” executive producer Shawn Levy said. “It is a kind of perfect storm combination of COVID shutdown, slower pace of filming in COVID protocols and health protocols, which are necessary, and coincidentally we chose Season 4 to be by far…the most ambitious of the seasons.” 

Due to the coronavirus pandemic, the schedule of filming season four is sluggish. Actors from Stranger Things, such as Finn Wolfhard and Gaten Matarazzo, are juggling other parts while filming amidst being a part of the Stranger Things cast. Wolfhard has been in the movie Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021) and Matarazzo in another Netflix series, Prank Encounters (2021-present). This season of filming was prone to inconveniences.

“With nine scripts, over eight-hundred pages, almost two years of filming, thousands of visual effects shots and a runtime nearly twice the length of any previous season, Stranger Things season 4 was the most challenging yet,” a letter from co-creators and brothers Matt and Ross Duffer said to fans. “But it was also the most rewarding,” they wrote.

That also explains why the season took longer to shoot than usual. However, it seems that it’s worth the wait due to the teaser trailer focusing on Jim Hopper’s (David Harbour) comeback and Eleven’s loss of telekinesis. 

Three years of production can lead fans to questions of what the Duffer brothers have in store. The expectations for season four are high and if the season does not suffice fans may be blue. 

Luckily, the Duffer brothers announced that season 5 will be released at an unknown time frame so that audiences can feel more satisfied knowing season four is not the end. Let’s hope that it won’t take another three years to film. 

The series, produced by Steven Speilburg, is not expected to go anywhere anytime soon. “Exciting, heartbreaking, and sometimes scary, Stranger Things acts as an addictive homage to Spielberg films and vintage 1980s television,” a Rotten Tomatoes critics consensus said.