If you’re still recovering from Season 4 of Stranger Things, have no fear: The Duffer Brothers already have a plan for when production on Season 5 will kick into gear. The creators of the series revealed in an exclusive interview with Collider that the writers’ room for the fifth and final season of the hit horror-nostalgia series begins this August.
“We're going to take a little vacation in July,” Ross Duffer told Collider’s own Steve Weintraub, “And then we're going to come back. I know that the writer's room is going to start in that first week of August.” Good news all around, for fans who are hoping to see more of their favorite Hawkins natives sooner rather than later.
However, given the amount of time and money that goes into making a global phenomenon like Stranger Things, this means that, while the Duffers have the rest of the series already mapped out, it’ll be a while before we see anything concrete on our screens — a devastating realization after the emotional toll exacted by the last two episodes of season four. (Hey, at least you’ll have time to properly mourn!)
The Duffers previously told Collider that the plan for seasons four and five had come together as one unit, rather than the creative team waiting until planning for Season 5 began to figure out how the series would end:
“We had all the scripts before we started shooting, so we could look at the whole thing as a whole. And we outlined all of five. So it really is four and five or like of a piece, and this was due to the six-month hiatus that we had due to the pandemic. So we don't typically have as much time. It usually feels like the train is going down the tracks and Ross and I and our writers are just throwing down track as we're going, once we're halfway through the season. And for the first time ever, we were able to look at it globally, not just Season Four, but Season Five as well.”
Part of the slow-down in production that allowed the Duffers to take a wider look at the world of Hawkins and the Upside Down was due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, but any fan of Stranger Things is sure to be grateful for the additional time spent on the scripts, and that the show’s creative team was able to come up with an ending for the much-beloved series well in advance, hopefully giving viewers the emotional satisfaction they’re looking for.
As we wait eagerly for season five, the first four seasons of Stranger Things — including the final two episodes of Season 4 — are streaming now on Netflix.